


Eyes to the horizon

by nymphori



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Amazing Race, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 14:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7536742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymphori/pseuds/nymphori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Tokyo! From this great city, eleven couples will take part in a race for one million dollars! Can these couples stand up to the stress of travelling together across thousands of miles? Which couple will master the combination of brains, brawn, and teamwork in order to win? These are the questions waiting to be answered as we get ready to begin the amazing race!</p><p>The world is waiting for you.</p><p>Good luck.</p><p>Travel safe.</p><p>Go!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes to the horizon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the province of Groningen in the north of Holland. Its extensive history dates all the way back to the year 4000 BC, and here at the water's edge: Zoutcamp Harbour. This was the seventh pitstop in a race around the world. Teams arrived here at the end of the last leg for a mandatory rest period. The six teams waiting here have no idea what's in store for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Yuuji & Hana  
>  #prematureacceleration  
>  Currently in first place **

 

Yuuji trips through the empty corridors of the hostel and Hana can't believe that she has to do this for him. _Again_. 

They're both working on exactly the same amount of sleep — in fact she has probably slept less than Yuuji. Half the reason for her tired puffy eyes is spending too long listening to Yuuji's uninterrupted sleep during the afternoon. 

And yet still, it is her responsibility to set the alarms; her responsibility to make sure that Yuuji actually gets up as it rings obnoxiously at _too-fucking-early_ in the morning instead of letting him hitting snooze on it for the fourth time in fewer minutes. It doesn't even seem like a productive way to sleep. He can't be getting good quality sleep. 

She knows this about him, she thinks this about him, but every morning when Yuuji finally does decide it's time to wake up he is fine. Beyond fine. Which is more than a little annoying.

It's only now, in the middle of The Netherlands and unable to wait until whatever time he deems more appropriate for greeting the dark sky awaiting them that he becomes a horrible person. 

Okay, it's not really that he's a horrible person, it's just that when they finally escaped the darkened corridors and traipse the barely lit lawn of the hostel to arrive at the pitstop with a time that means leaving well before the sun, Hana resorts to acting like Yuuji's mum and nothing at all like the partnership they need to have if this is going to be a thing they want to keep doing.

She isn't here to act as Yuuji's mother. That's not what she wants to be. It's not going to work if Yuuji insists on being looked after rather than working together.

It’s too early for any light to appear on the horizon. But the frosty air seems to do a good job of waking Yuuji up properly — it has it’s benefits even as Hana massages her hands to keep them warm from the biting chill that is settled in the air. 

And by the time they're on the mat, yellow envelope in the hands of the recording team that stares them down, Yuuji looks ready to face all of their upcoming challenges head on. 

This is the Yuuji that Hana enjoys being with, the Yuuji who is awake and cooperative and almost bouncing off the walls with energy.

She doesn't bounce, she is nowhere close to doing so. Hana knows that Yuuji must sometimes resent her for pulling him away from some of his bounding around, but this is how they work.

"Where do you hope you're going?" The cameraman asks them.

"I hope we're going somewhere warm!" Yuuji exclaims and Hana watches the puff of breath the words create float up in front of them. And if it weren’t for his words Hana wouldn’t even believe Yuuji was feeling the cold. She’s been trying to ignore it, thinking that if she doesn't think about it — even as she crushes her hands together once more — then it's not really there. Now Yuuji has brought it up, it's impossible not to think about it. She rubs her hands together harder and tries to take comfort in the bright smile that takes over Yuuji's face as the envelope is placed completely into his hands.

"We're ready now!" 

Yuuji rips open the envelope like a gun has gone off at the starting line. Hana doesn't read it over his shoulder, just listens, she can read it over again while they're on their way to whatever it is they're doing next. "Fly to Corazon de America Paraguay, you have two hundred dollars for this leg of the race."

"Let's go," Hana urges, pulling Yuuji off the mat and back up the road they had cycled down the day before. Production already has a taxi waiting for them. "Can we go to the international airport?" Hana asks in her best English.

"Airport! Airport!" Yuuji cheers from next to her. The driver eyes up the cameraman already letting himself into the front seat and then turns back to them without saying a thing. Yuuji mimes a plane taking off and the driver nods. 

Hana lets out a sigh of relief, it seems to be as good of an answer as they’re going to get and hopefully, they'll make it to the airport in decent time. 

As they settle into the backseat, camera pointed from one direction and microphone from another, Hana pulls out the sheet of extra information to read.

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Tetsurou & Wakatoshi  
>  #VO2themax  
>  Currently in second place **

 

"Where would you like to go?" The cameraman asks, as they do every single time they step foot on the mat.

Tetsurou shrugs his shoulders, I wouldn't mind staying here for another leg, it's a beautiful country."

Beside him, Tetsurou feels Ushijima nod stiffly, "the rolling green fields are a delight to gaze upon. I would enjoy being able to see more of them."

Tetsurou laughs at the words, "they asked where you wanted to go, not for you to recite poetry."

"Is that what you consider poetry?" Ushijima asks, cocking his head, "if so I feel sorry for your future partner." Tetsurou abruptly stops laughing and shoots a glare at the cameraman who is biting back a smirk. He doesn’t need to have himself being smack talked by Ushijima spread out to the world.

"Yeah, yeah, how long do we have?"

"Two minutes." Tetsurou is told.

"Two minutes?" He repeats. "Why did we come out here so early then? It's freezing."

"It is three degrees according to the temperature gauge that was inside."

Tetsurou lets out a sigh and watches it dissipate into the air in from of them. "Almost freezing, then." He relents and Ushijima nods, satisfied with Tetsurou’s updated observation.

"When you're ready,” comes the call.

Tetsurou takes a deep breath and rips at the seam of the envelope in his hand. "Fly to Corazon de America Paraguay,” Tetsurou takes a deep breath, excitement at their next destination already pumping through his arteries, “we're going to South America!" Tetsurou cheers.

Ushijima takes the envelope from his hands and without a word turns to walk in the direction the cycled yesterday. Tetsurou follows him, bouncing slightly with his steps. South America, he's never been before. He’s always wanted to but he's never been, never had the opportunity — it doesn't matter that the same can be said for the last few countries he's visited, what matters is that Paraguay is so close to where one of the teams he and Bokuto both idolise play. 

The dream is so close to being a reality.

Tetsurou crosses his fingers as Ushijima deals with the taxi driver, maybe their next stop will be Brazil, maybe they'll get to play a game, maybe it will be one of their tasks! He’s seen it before!

"We have two hundred dollars, here," Ushijima says, handing over the money to Tetsurou once they settle into the back seat of the car. Tetsurou counts it out in his lap and places it with the rest of their money — of varying currencies — safely in the pouch at his waist. "We are flying to Asuncion, Paraguay, and when there we have to take a taxi to metalurgica punta de rieles and search for the next clue."

"I have no idea what you just said," Tetsurou says.

Ushijima frowns for a moment that is far too long, Tetsurou can almost see the words on the page swimming in his eyes. "Neither do I."

"We can look it up when we get to the airport. We'll probably need to find an address."

Ushijima huffs out an agreement and leans his head against the car door, shutting his eyes. Tetsurou agrees with the action, but it’s hard to mimic it when he’s stuck in the middle seat. Hopefully, at the airport, they'll be able to find the information they need in order to sleep peacefully for at least a few hours on the plane. 

He's pretty sure a flight from Amsterdam to Paraguay is going to be a long one.

 

  

 

 

 

 

> **Suguru & Mika**  
>  **#solemates**  
>  **Currently in third place**

 

Suguru breathes out warm air onto her hands and rubs her fingers between his own. Mika wants to lose herself to the moment, but she's all too aware of the camera pointing at them. She wants to enjoy the moment, but she's all too aware that this moment is not only shared between them, but also the camera and audio people in front of her, the few people that are making sure the mat is lit up, and soon, everyone back home. Everyone she knows and so many more people that she doesn't know. This moment isn't theirs, it's a moment that is going to be shared. 

She appreciates it, but at the same time, she can’t.

Mika offers Suguru a small smile anyway. She can see when the action registers, sees what it means reflected in his eyes, followed by the understanding. She’s happy and she's thankful— for the small action, but she's uncomfortable putting it in words when so many people are going to see it.

Suguru sends her own smile back at her, "just think Mika, maybe we'll get to go somewhere warm."

"Hopefully," Mika agrees, leaning into the kiss that is pressed against her forehead and burrowing into the warmth that Suguru offers her as his arms wrap around her body. 

Still the camera whirls on, still she sees the microphone looming in front of them, but if she presses her face in close enough into Suguru’s chest she can block most of it out.

"When you're ready."

Slowly, she peels herself from Suguru's warm embrace. Even without direct contact, the heat lingers. It's done its job. Plus, soon they will be moving and racing and she'll be too high on the race to even think about being cold.

Hopefully, in the next leg, they won't have to swim through freezing cold water in their underwear. Not even a hot shower in the room has helped her to feel like her temperature is back to normal again.

Suguru rips open the envelope and holds it out in front of them for her to read, "fly to Corazon de America Paraguay."

"You have two hundred dollars for this leg of the race," Suguru finishes reading out. "Mika, Paraguay is on the other side of the world from here, it'll definitely be warmer!"

She shivers where she's standing at the reminder of the cold surrounding them. Suguru catches the action and is quick to take her hand in his much warmer palm. "Come on, let's grab a taxi and make sure the heater is up as high as it goes!"

Mika lets out a laugh at that. It makes her sound like she hates this place, but she doesn't, her body just doesn't agree with the cold. Mika is sure she would enjoy this place so much more in warmer weather.

At the airport, Suguru leads them a safe distance away from where Kuroo and Ushijima are seated and in the direction of the departure board. There don't appear to be any flights to Asuncion on the board, meaning they'll have to connect through another city. Mika's problem is that she doesn't know where the best place to connect through would be. A bigger European airport? A South American one.

“Misaki is over there, should we ask what flight they're on?" Mika hadn't even noticed her, it's probably the lack of crew around her. When she looks further, Mika can spot them following Terushima as he races up and down the few people that are waiting in line for the check-in counters. She doesn't even want to guess at what he's trying to do.

They approach Hana together. “Do you have any recommendations for flights?" 

Hana jumps at the question, then slowly turns, looking up at the both of them. She lets out a yawn that Mika empathises with. "The earliest flight that gets in leaves at eight this morning,” she muffles another yawn behind her hand, “and gets in at ten forty-five tonight." Mika nods her head, and next to her, she knows that Suguru storing the information. "It has two connecting flights, though, and the one from Madrid to Buenos Aires is full." Next to her, Mika knows that Suguru is counting out only that Madrid is an option. "Yuuji and I are on the KLM flight to Sao Paulo and have a connection there to Asuncion. Kuroo and Ushijima probably have the same."

"Thank you," Mika says.

"No worries," Hana replies.

With a wave and a few more pleasantries, just for good measure, she follows Suguru to the departures board. "There are a lot of flights to Sao Paulo."

"It means we'll all probably be together."

“Misaki said they were on the KLM flight," Suguru pulls a notebook out from the pouch at his waist and writes in the flight number from the board. "Just in case, we should check if there are other connections that get us to Asuncion quicker."

Mika nods and follows the flag down to a roped off check-in counter.

"Good morning!" Suguru utters in a sweet voice. "What is the quickest flight from here to Asuncion?"

"Eight o'clock on Iberia," is the quick reply. It’s obvious that the question has been asked before.

"That's the one Hana said was full," Mika whispers into Suguru's ear, and hearing it offered has Mika feeling like the flight they’ll be offered will be the same, and if the others have done their research as well, the best.

Suguru nods, "are there two seats that go the whole way?"

The attendant sighs, but still moves to tap at the keyboard in front of them. "The middle flight is overbooked.” Another sentence that sounds like it’s been said too many times already.

It's as they expected really. "What's the next quickest flight then?"

"KLM gets in just before one, with a stopover in Sao Paulo.” The words are said so smoothly, without even waiting to check on the information. As the words stop their fingers still fly, coming to rest a few beats after the words are in the air.

"The flight Hana is on." Suguru nods.

"Are both flights KLM?" The attendant nods their head. "Does that mean we can check in for both flights here?" Another nod. "Two tickets for those flights, please! As close to the front of the plane as possible!" 

Suguru collects the tickets and their passports when they're handed back over to them. He studies them for a quick moment, "the stopover is six hours."

"My vote then," Mika says, "is to rest here and to look up and ask for directions when we're in Sao Paulo. There are probably more people around who can help." Suguru nods his agreement.

Mika leads the both of them back over to where Hana is sitting, still alone and still watching after Terushima.

"What's he doing?" Suguru asks. 

Hana shrugs. "I think he's trying to convince somebody to buy him food." 

Mika chuckles to herself at the admission. It’s still too early for any of the shops to be open, and there seem to be far too few people for Terushima to successfully gain pity from. Still, she wishes him luck.

 

 

 

  

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in fourth place**

 

Koutarou leans all of his weight into an appreciative Oikawa. Well, Koutarou is pretty sure he's appreciative anyway - he's only whining a little bit about how heavy Koutarou is so he can’t mind too much.

"Where are you hoping to go next?"

"Brazil!" Koutarou cheers without even pausing to think it over. It’s the same answer he’s given the last six times they asked him.

Oikawa mumbles something under his breath and Koutarou doesn't need to hear it to know what was said. Koutarou doesn’t respond, only shushes him by leaning into him further, pulling back only when Oikawa appears to be in danger of toppling over. As funny as it would be Koutarou doesn’t actually want to let it happen. Not when there's a sign as big as they are standing behind them. If Oikawa hit it the wrong way on the way down— Koutarou doesn't even want to think about it.

"When you're ready."

Koutarou eases his weight back to his own feet and stands up properly. He bounces in place as Oikawa tears open the envelope and reads it to the camera with a smile and a toss of his head thatsomehow manages to catch an absent wind in his hair. "Fly to Corazon de America Paraguay."

"Paraguay!" Koutarou echoes. "Paraguay! Paraguay! Paraguay!"

"You do know Paraguay is not Brazil, right?" Oikawa asks.

"Of course, I know!" Koutarou shouts back offended that Oikawa felt the need to ask. He shoots a guilty look towards the lady holding up the microphone for the loud outburst, but she only smiles at him. Oikawa joked earlier that they're probably used to his noise by now, he’s probably right, they’ve had plenty of time to adjust for him by now. "But Paraguay is Brazil's next door neighbour! We're so close!"

"Are you excited?" The cameraman asks.

"Paraguay! Paraguay! Paraguay!" Koutarou chants.

“Hmmm,” Oikawa hums, hand on his chin, contemplating, ”I can't really tell,", he directs to the camera.

Koutarou catches him in his arms and lifts him into the sky. “I’m really excited!” He cheers, “we’re going to Paraguay!"

“—You tell me." Oikawa continues, ignoring Koutarou’s words and struggling to let his face be seen over Koutarou’s flailing arms and bulky shoulder.

"Paraguay! Paraguay! Paraguay!"

"He's never going to shut up!" Oikawa despairs to the camera. Koutarou quiets down, just a little, when Oikawa fits his hand in between Koutarou's fingers and drags him away. "You know," he says, quieter, not for the cameras but just for him, ”we need to actually leave if we're ever going to make it to Paraguay."

"Paraguay! Paraguay! Paraguay!" Koutarou cheers again, skipping ahead to pull Oikawa along to the taxi. "We're going to Paraguay!" Koutarou shouts, this time at the taxi driver, only for the words to be met with a blank stare.

"He can't understand you, idiot." Oikawa chastises. "International airport, please,” he says slowly, enunciating his words. The taxi driver nods and they are on their way.

Koutarou shakes in the backseat. He can't wait. He'll be so close, so close to where he's always wanted to go.

_Next time_. He crosses his fingers for next time.

They have to. They have to. They have to.

 

 

 

 

 

> **Kenji & Mai**  
>  **#servedwithice**  
>  **Currently in fifth place**

 

Kenji sighs into the air and watches it unfurl in front of him. Next to him, Nametsu shivers. Kenji breathes out slowly again and watches Nametsu tuck herself further into his jacket draped over her shoulders.

The morning is dark, frosty. He breathes again, over his hands this time, to warm them up, and looks further into their surroundings. In the distance, over mountains, or hills maybe, he’s not quite sure, light is spilling into the sky. Finally, some light and some warmth to greet them. Right as they’re about to leave of course.

A breeze runs through the valley they stand in. Kenji shivers himself, and holds back a laugh as Nametsu scrambles to position herself behind him. Out of the path of the wind, she uses Kenji to block some of the cold.

It's cute, she’s cute, she looks cute, he can't say so.

Kenji feels her shiver at his back, even though she’s bundled up in what is almost all of their combined clothes, seeing her get dressed in their room earlier was like watching a present being wrapped. She looks ten times her usual size. Short and round and cute and tucked in behind him out of the cold. It’s a different Nametsu to the one he’s used to seeing. The one who’s energetic and loud and playful and Kenji likes this side of her too. The Nametsu who is small and meek and quiet.

Kenji can't say so. He doesn’t think Nametsu will appreciate the statement. Not without an explanation - and while they have cameras rolling on their every move, to explain would just be embarrassing.

"Any guesses on where you'll be going?”

“Nametsu is dressed for Antarctica so fingers crossed," Kenji laughs for the camera. Nametsu seems to step out from behind him just so that she can direct a long glare his way, "or maybe not."

"We're already in the _Arctic_ Futakuchi,"

"Not quite." Kenji answers, the words cooly received with another glare. Over the last few days it’s become her default expression, and he’s not sure whether to be proud of the fact or not.

"It's cold enough for it."

"Well then,” he says for the camera once more, “let's hope it's neither Antarctica or the _actual_ Arctic that we're going to!"

Nametsu sighs, it’s one step further than a glare and Kenji takes it as a sign to shut up. Someone laughs, but he can't pinpoint exactly who.

"You're good to go."

Kenji sighs this time, finally. Nametsu brings forth the envelope from where it's been tucked into her sprawling layers of clothes and rips the tab open. Kenji crowds in to read the clue off with her. "Fly to Corazon de America Paraguay." They say together.

"At least it'll be warmer than here!" It's the first time Kenji has said something that Nametsu appreciates all morning, the words received with a smile and a nod of her head, she even stands up straighter. "Let's head for the airport." Nametsu follows him slowly as they walk off the mat, reading through the additional information. Kenji will read it over himself once they’re in the car.

He matches his pace with hers and nods to the wave Sawamura throws him as he heads down to the mat with his own partner. They'll probably be on the same flight. And hopefully, they'll be lucky enough that the other teams had to wait until a decent time in the morning for a flight as well.

  

 

 

 

 

> **Daichi & Yui**  
>  **#quadsoffury**  
>  **Currently in sixth place**

 

Daichi stifles a yawn behind his hand after waving Futakuchi off and Yui rushes ahead now that the mat is open. She jumps on it like it's the finish line instead of their starting line for the day, and Daichi slowly makes his way towards her.

Yui jogs in place on the mat to keep warm, Daichi attempts the same by keeping his hands firmly locked in his pockets. 

"Are you excited? I'm excited! Where do you think we'll go next?"

Daichi hunches up his shoulders to bury himself further into his jacket. "Does it matter?" Yui shrinks into herself, stilling for just a moment, before she goes back to jogging in place. "I'll be happy no matter where we end up, won't you? Guessing isn't going to help us figure anything out, I can be excited for it when we get there." Yui smiles up at him and Daichi is glad he didn't stall her excitement for too long.

Daichi, in general, is just having trouble dealing with all of her excitement while the sun is yet to crawl it's way into the sky. It's too early to have energy, too early to think. He hates that they were the last team to arrive, but he's happier with the circumstances knowing that the other teams all had to get up even earlier.

It’s a small thing to be happy about, but he has to find a silver lining to their placement somewhere.

He's excited to get to the airport and hopefully — oh, Daichi very much hopes — be able to see what other teams are left. He's seen Futakuchi already, which is nice, he likes Futakuchi and Nametsu, they've helped each other out before. Daichi would love if either Kuroo or Bokuto's teams had left, but he's also aware that it's probably too much wishful thinking. 

They're both too competitive and way too lucky. Things have a way of falling in line for the both of them.

Yui cheers as she's handed the envelope, vibrating with an overflowing mixture of anticipation and excitement even when they're told there's still a couple of minutes until they can read it.

She skips on the spot, waving the envelope around and it makes Daichi chuckle. She has a personality that's made for this show, made for people to see, so long as she forgets that there are going to be people watching her. She's gotten used to the camera now, while Daichi still can't help but note sometimes that it's there. It's what has him keeping his distance most of the time.

She has already started a countdown. 

When she reaches zero, nobody stops her, and she tears at the tab on the envelope. The entire back face of it falls apart and Yui's face falls into despair to match it. "Next time," she says to herself. Daichi can barely hear it, he wonders if the mics pick it up. "Next time I will peel it off successfully." Daichi just wonders if that day will ever come, and if it comes, does that mean he'll finally have a turn at opening the envelope himself?

"Fly to— Paraguay. Oh! Daichi we're going to Paraguay! That's so exciting!" Daichi feels a smile spread out over his own face, it's probably nothing compared to Yui's. A shadow next to her own shining happiness.

Daichi picks up his bag from their feet and slides Michimiya's over his shoulder as well. "Let's get going then, we might be able to catch up to the others." Yui skips ahead of him, the same direction they had seen Futakuchi and Nametsu walking earlier. Daichi picks his pace up to stay on her tail and lets her handle telling the taxi driver where to go.

They settle next to each other in the back seat and Yui sits as close as possible to him. Daichi wraps an arm around her shoulders so she can settle in easier. "South America, Daichi! Are you excited?"

He laughs, “of course I'm excited,” he’s just much better at controlling his excitement, “what else does it say?"

Yui pulls out the second sheet of paper and reads it over, “wow, we have two hundred dollars!" Daichi plucks the money from her fingers before her excited shaking deposits it elsewhere in the car. "We have to take a taxi to... _this place_ and then we get our next clue!" Daichi reads the paper in her hands and laughs at her avoidance the words— not that he wants to try saying them either. They'll have to practice at the airport for when they get there, to tell the taxi driver, and so that the camera has them saying them properly at least once.

As they pull up to the airport Daichi is quick to pay the driver while Yui collects their bags from the boot. Once finished with the transaction Daichi takes them back from her. She skips into the airport the same way she's skipped everywhere else this morning - straight to where Futakuchi and Nametsu are talking with two other teams. Daichi feels a tightness he hadn't even noticed leave his chest. They're together with other teams as well, it's a nice feeling.

Futakuchi waves them in.

"Did you buy tickets yet?" Daichi asks.

"Not yet," Futakuchi answers, "I was getting information," he waves at Terushima and Daishou, their partners sleeping curled up next to them. "If we get the right tickets we should all be able to get on the same flight as these guys and everyone else."

That is definitely good news. Daichi nods his assent to the idea, without even asking for the flight information, and follows Futakuchi up to the check-in counter.

"Could we please get four tickets on the KLM flight to Asuncion?" Futakuchi asks with a wide smile and Daichi feels his shoulders settle even further. 

Futakuchi turns around with an even wider smile on his face and Daichi returns it full force with a nod of his head just for good measure.

The attendant behind the desk settles into tapping at the keys of the computer in front of them and even though it sounds fast than Daichi has ever used computers before he has to bite down the way he wants to urge them to hurry up. It's not going to help.

It’s not going to help. 

In time, they stop tapping at the keyboard and smile up at them all. “Four tickets, KLM, and I've checked you in all the way through so all you have to worry about it getting to the gate.” They press at a few more keys on the computer in front of them and then faces them all with a smile that says she knows this is everything they’ve been waiting to hear. “Which you should have plenty of time to do!" 

She flashes the tickets out to sit on the counter in front of them. Futakuchi collects them all but then passes them off to Daichi. He looks at the tickets briefly before separating the two which are in the row behind. Futakuchi bought them the tickets, Daichi can give them a row. It’s the nice thing to do.

Daichi passes Futakuchi and Nametsu’s tickets forward and in turned he is passed back his and Yui's passports. "Thanks!" 

"No worries!" Futakuchi says, "now let's go sit down, apparently Terushima convinced a bunch of people to buy his needy ass food!"

Daichi has put up with a lot more for food - some half decent company is fine. If Terushima really has procured food, then Daichi might have some and then join the girls in their naps. Yui doesn't seem like she needs sleep, but he definitely feels like he could do with more — yes, even though he's about to jump on a plane for who knows how many hours. The plane isn’t the comfiest place to sleep, and they're travelling half way around the world.

"Oof!" Daichi wakes to find Kuroo lying sprawled across his chest. "Kuroo, you're too— Ah!" Bokuto's face smiles down at him from above Kuroo. Great, Daichi thinks, the two most competitive teams both managed to stay in. Of course, they did. "You guys are way too heavy!" 

Bokuto pouts for half a second and then smiles, "thanks!"

“You’re… welcome?" Daichi says, unsure what reason Bokuto has to enjoy being heavy.

"Glad to see you're still in it big boy!"

"Big boy?" Daichi repeats slowly, "you're the one who's squashing me."

"I thought we just agreed Bokuto was the heavy one?"

"Thanks!" Bokuto cheers again.

Kuroo lets out a giant smile down to Daichi, but Daichi knows it's not meant for him. "You were heavy enough on your own, I didn't need both of you." Kuroo's smile vanishes in an instant, and Daichi feels a little proud of himself for being able to achieve such a thing. Unfortunately, it doesn't get them off of him any faster. "Why did you feel the need to pile yourselves on top of me? I was having a good sleep."

"We could tell," Kuroo says, and Bokuto nods his own agreement too, “but we needed to wake you up because the flight’s boarding soon; we’re nice like that!"

"There are nicer ways to be woken up."

Bokuto pouts, but Kuroo grins and Daichi doesn't like the look of it at all. "I see, next time I'll make sure to wake you up with a kiss Sleeping Beauty!" 

And that's enough of that.

Daichi rolls himself off of the seat, not minding the crash of the floor. The combined grunts of Bokuto and Kuroo hitting it too is enough to soothe his own pain from the collision.

Daichi is the first to stand, "well if the flight’s boarding soon we really have to book it through customs, off we go!"

It feels nice, to have Kuroo and Bokuto glaring up at him from the floor. The crash landing has also woken him up enough to see that all of the other teams are still around, a couple of them holding laughter back behind their hands. Daichi feels even better about Kuroo and Bokuto joining him in his crash landing - if the others are still here it's highly unlikely that their flight's about to board.

—And Yui is still awake, still here with him, and he can't really picture her letting him sleep through the boarding of their flight.

"How long do we actually have until we board?"

"An hour," Yui says.

"I see, thanks," Daichi responds, to the two on the floor he says "fuck you guys." There's more laughter now, including a few chuckles from the guys he’s trying to be angry at.

Daichi stretches his arms out above his head and feels the stretch pull at his muscles all the way down his back. "Now that I'm awake we might as well actually go through customs and get ready to board."

They head for the customs queue as a big group and has Daichi feelings a little bit like he's on a school trip. Enquiring gazes of people around them, likely curious about what such a large group of them are doing, and everything.

Once on the other side of security, they all compare tickets to see where they’re all sitting on the plane, and here they discover that Kuroo, Ushijima, Oikawa and Bokuto are all on a separate seconds flight to the rest of them. It’s nice knowing that they won’t be on the same connecting flight as the rest of them. It’s nice to know, just to know that they can mess up their flights occasionally, even if the giant layover at this point means that having to check into another airline at their next stop isn’t going to be as big of a deal as it could have been.

The information has Daichi making a note in his head, to always, always, always, double check his flights and how far he’s booked around the world on those flights.

As it is, Daichi yawns his way off the plane in Sao Paulo and by the time he’s found somewhere to sit and while away most of the waiting time, the two teams not on their flight have already checked in and are making their way back. 

And he hates it more than a little bit, because then, _of course_ , they run. 

They always run. 

And Daichi would like it very much, if just once, the running didn't start until they were outside of the airport.

But no, two o'clock in the morning and all four of them are racing to stand just that little bit further ahead in the queue through customs, and then again, they race to the exit for the taxis. 

The airport is one of the few places Daichi doesn't want to run - at least this side of the flight. He has no qualms in racing to get on a flight, but once they've landed safely he just wants to walk just for a little while through the airport as he prepares himself for what's ahead.

Oikawa and Ushijima will never let that happen. They're permanently in competition with each other. And then there's Kuroo and Bokuto running up behind them, seemingly trying to find out who can shout out what country they're in the loudest. 

Daichi's been in Paraguay for all of what feels like ten seconds, and he's ready to leave just so that he doesn't have to deal with them.

It's just one of the reasons why knocking at least one of them out will help everyone else.

Daichi only wants to be able to walk to find his taxi and not look so much like a crazy foreigner, but with an entire hoard of them doing the same thing — just to keep up — Daichi knows that crazy foreigner is exactly how they are coming off.

As much as he hates it, running to keep up pays off when they finally make it outside to the row of taxis waiting to pick people up. Yui helps talk and smile their way to the front of the line and once they’re inside she feeds the taxi driver the directions to where they're going, and in turn, the driver feeds it into his GPS. 

Thirteen kilometres.

There is no time for him to rest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in fourth place**

 

"Taxi! Taxi! Taxi!" Tooru chants, timing the words with every fall of his feet.

The only thing he’s aware of is Ushijima running in line next to him. The rest of the world is a blur of colours. White walls, grey floors, the colours of bags and clothes swirling into one. He doesn’t even know if Bokuto is running with him, only trusts that he is. Tooru has to beat Ushijima but he can see Ushijima, big and dark and very very present at his side; he doesn’t have the time to look and see if Bokuto is running with him.

He can hear people. He can hear people swearing. Tooru bursts past everything and the only thing that lets him know the coloured blurs are people is the swearing in his ears as he rushes by. Any other time he would stop and charm and apologise, but at the moment there is no time for such a thing. Today, in this moment, he is in a rush and he has places to be and he doesn’t have the time to be polite.

"Hey, hey, hey!" The words are called out from behind him, Bokuto’s voice spilling into his conscious hearing from behind him and to the right. _The right_. Tooru adjusts his running accordingly and veers in that direction.

Bokuto can run fast, faster than Tooru, but when Tooru races like this Bokuto always takes the reins in actually looking around. It’s usually his own specialty, but when he’s put neck and neck against Ushijima he loses everything else, all he knows is the need to beat Ushijima, to whatever the task at hand is.

Tooru needs to reach the taxi stand first.

In a flash, Bokuto is already ahead of him pushing through the line for the cars. Ahead of him, Bokuto is already climbing into a car. "Tell him! Tell him! Tell him!" He shouts out with heaving breaths, and Oikawa is brought back into racing their own race, into being on Bokuto’s team, into not doing this own his own, and on to the fact that Bokuto has no actual idea of where they're going.

—if he’s going to keep hanging out with Kuroo at airports, the least Bokuto could do is pick up tips from Kuroo. All he has to do is listen in to Ushijima and Kuroo talking, surely they’re bragging, about knowing where they’re going and about what they’re doing once they’re there. All Bokuto has to do is listen in to whatever crap it is they’re saying.

They have to be dropping some kind of game plan that Bokuto has the possibility of overhearing.

"Metalurgica punta de rieles?" Tooru asks, he gets a nod rather than a yes in return, but he takes it as a good sign.

Behind him he hears Kuroo shout, "follow that cab, we're in a race!" And Tooru's only consolation is hoping that the driver of the car behind doesn't understand his words.

"Don't let the guy behind pass us!" In contrast, he hopes their own driver does understand the rushed words. To Tooru, Bokuto says, "it feels so good to be in Paraguay!"

Tooru just gapes at the words, he doesn’t feel like he's much of anywhere at the moment. They're speeding down a dark unfamiliar road in the back seat of a taxi being chased down by Ushijima and Kuroo. They could be anywhere in the world, it’s an occurrence that feels like it’s happened all over the world. The fact that they're in Paraguay, at this point, doesn’t mean a thing.

 

 

 

 

 

> **Kenji & Mai**  
>  **#servedwithice**  
>  **Currently in first place**

 

"It's just up here on the left," Kenji says, recognising the words on the giant sign just outside of their window. It's strange, even after looking the place up he didn't expect it to be quite so… big, or even for the driver to know where to take them without handing off an address as well. 

He could have spent more time at the airport looking up other things.

"Can you wait here for us?" Nametsu asks, and Kenji feels his whole body jolt - he'd nearly forgotten to ask. That could have been bad.

The driver nods, and starts his metre up again. Kenji lays a hand on the pouch at his waist, hopefully, this won't take too long.

"Whoa," Nametsu says under her breath, Kenji thinks differently.

Such a large amount of things should not be able to fit into such a small space. It doesn't seem like it should be possible, and yet, in front of Kenji's eyes are swings and slides and tunnels and monkey bars and just— so many colourful things trapped inside fences that seem too small to contain them. From where they stand it looks like a jungle made of metal. Blue and red and green and orange and so many other colours that Kenji can't even tell in the small lights that line the yard.

"We have to find the clue somewhere in this mess?" Nametsu glares at him, but Kenji pretends not to have seen it. Surely, she has to be at least a little intimidated by this.

"Don't forget—"

"How could I possibly forget?" He eyes the papers held tight in Nametsu's hand and follows behind her as she climbs up a ladder close to them. From the top of the ladder, Kenji sees more. He sees that while it is still crowded beyond belief with all kinds of metal contraptions, there is still space to walk. There are also grills and boxes and even more tunnels than he saw before.

This could be challenging.

Still, it could be worse, Kenji thinks, sliding down behind her, they could have had to do this in the middle of the afternoon rather than in the middle of the night. The metal slide could have been scolding against his skin, instead, it is pleasantly cool compared to the warm air that even now permeates through the night. During the day the metal of the yard probably radiates heat like a furnace — he’s much happier to be doing this now.

What's sleep compared to a playground he would have died for were he twenty years younger?

"What are we looking for?" He lifts up the lid of what seems to be a grill. He lifts another. There are twenty or so more just in this section of the yard.

"A clue," Nametsu sighs, "like always." 

“Right,” he wasn't really asking, now he just feels incredibly stupid.

He searches another grill. Nothing. It might not even be in a grill. It might be in the middle of one of the other slides or held tight between two joined poles or coiled around one of the hundreds of metal bars that are just … everywhere.Kenji will never know, not until there's no point to it anymore. He keeps on lifting lids, checking in on Nametsu between grills to see her doing the same thing.

"I got it, I got it, I got it!" Nametsu shouts, and Kenji is glad they're still the only ones here — did the others get lost? it didn't seem that difficult a place to find for their driver — because he doesn't mind being friendly when they're booking flights to make sure that if he doesn't get the tickets then at least one other team isn't getting them either, but when it comes down to the actual competition— 

Well, Kenji isn't here to make friends. 

Kenji races to Nametsu’s side and drags her away from the grill she had pulled it from. If anyone shows up while they're reading Kenji doesn't want them immediately figuring out where to find it.

Although, now that he knows the clue is from a grill. It seems like a pretty obvious hiding spot.

Nametsu tears the envelope open and Kenji shuffles in next to her to read it out. "Stacked up or strung out?"

Neither of the titles particularly appeal to him, Kenji quickly reads over the descriptions.

"I'm thinking watermelons," Kenji says.

Nametsu whispers through the words next to him. "Stacked up: make your way to Mercado Central de Abasto. Once there, stack watermelons in the same way as the local vendors." Kenji waits, "what's the other one?"

"Stringing a harp," he says. It's funny to see Nametsu pull a face for once.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “let's do the watermelons."

"Okay, we're doing stacked up," Kenji says to the camera in his face. He makes a grab for Nametsu's hand and pulls her towards the exit with him. "Come on, let's go. We might even be in first place!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Suguru & Mika**  
>  **#solemates**  
>  **Currently in second place**

 

"Here, this is it," Suguru says, and Mika leans across him, following the direction of his eyes to where a giant sign is lit up under what are clearly crew lights. There are definitely benefits, she thinks, to doing this all on the wrong side of daylight. Even if it means she has to fight with her body fighting to pull her into slumber. She shouldn’t need to sleep, she slept on the plane, and they’re in another time zone which should have her body in the middle of the afternoon, but the dark sky overrides all of her conscious thoughts. ”Pull over, pull over!"

The taxi comes to a stop next to a similar car, at least one other team has already been here then. Mika spies them before they're even fully outside of the car — Futakuchi and Mai tumbling gracelessly down a metal slide.

Hopefully being out in the air and the adrenaline of the task they’re soon to receive will wake her up and speed her up.

"We have to go down the slide," Suguru says. She’s just seen Futakuchi and Mai on the slide, she knows where that is.

"Yeah, it's right here Suguru!" She responds, rushing over to where Futakuchi and Mai have just disembarked. Mika climbs up one ladder and Suguru climbs up the slide next to her, fingers over the rim and feet slipping up the surface. "Where do you think it's going to be?" Here, atop the ladder, with a birds eye view of what looks like a graveyard of play equipment seems like it will be the best place to view everything. 

The only problem is the tight squeeze of the both of them balancing atop the small platform together. 

Suguru advances down the slide first, it's not hard to see why, given the lack of space and more car lights beaming down the road — they have to be quick. From her perch atop the slide, Mika looks out over the yard they have to search through. Nothing stands out to her. Nothing looks obvious. 

She sighs with disappointment. She doesn’t feel ready for this.

"Just look hard," Suguru says, ushering her down the slide, ”keep your torch on and your eyes peeled."

Mika switches on the flashlight strapped around her head and it makes everything directly around her so much easier to see. She pushes herself down the slide just as two more cars pull up. She doesn't wait to see who's just arrived, anybody who joins them at this point is someone she doesn’t want to see.

She climbs up equipment, shines her light down tunnels and stares intently at the few yellow poles that form a part of the colourful play equipment, pondering, are the clues somehow embedded into them? Or are they a little bit more obvious than that? She drops down from the new platform she’s been crawling through and chases after Suguru as he disappears further into the yard. They have to stay together.

“I feel like they can’t be too hidden if we’re meant to find them in the middle of the night.”

Suguru exhales a breath that Mika takes as agreement, “plus,” he says, “Futakuchi already found it.”

 

 

 

 

 

> **Daichi & Yui**  
>  **#quadsoffury**  
>  **Currently in third place**

 

"Please wait!" Yui races from the car and doesn't even think to wait for Daichi to catch up with her. She doesn’t need to, she knows he'll be there, always right behind her right when she needs him. And her intuition is particularly on point given their need to be almost chained to each other's side while they race.

She can see two flashlights ahead of them, working their way steadily through the area on the other side of the fence. A challenge, someone to race. She is quick to climb up the slide and make her way down, Daichi takes a little bit longer to do so.

"Wow!" It makes her wish she was a child again, or even that she didn't have to find her way through it in such a hurry. She'd love to explore the place, preferably in the daylight, even being able to see more seems like it would be a delight. She would love nothing more than to go up and down every slide, play on every swing set, climb and tumble through every hole and over every bar she can see in this place.

Daichi gives her a gentle nudge on the back as he pushes past and Yui reminds herself of what she needs to do. _Search_. She needs to search for the clue.

"All right," she claps both hands over her face, relishing in the sting it leaves behind, and watches the smile bloom across Daichi's face at the familiar action, he knows she’s ready now. ”Where do we go?"

She's talking to herself, following after Daichi's sure steps, she doesn't expect a response. So it’s a surprise to get one. "Here, here, here, right here!" Daichi slams down the lid of a grill only a few metres away and Yui cheers for their find. Across the yard she watches the two sets of flashlights turn in their direction. Behind them, Terushima and Hana have appeared, slipping into the yard and sprinting in their direction.

"Oops," she laughs. Daichi only smiles at her and hands her the envelope to rip open. "Oops again."

Daichi brushes a hand roughly through her hair and Yui laughs before bending in closer to shine a light on the words waiting to be read in her hands.

"Stacked up or strung out?" She reads.

"The watermelons," Daichi responds quickly, "it'll be easy."

Yui trusts him, only glancing briefly at the other option before agreeing with the decision.

"Yay! Let's go."

As they crawl up and down the slide again to get back to their taxi she spies two more taxi's pulling into the lot, meaning that only Futakuchi and Mai are ahead of them. They must be in second place She pulls Daichi into the car quickly behind her and he falls into her lap. She doesn't wait for him to sit up properly before she waves the new destination in the face of the taxi driver. "To the fruit market!" She calls.

And they're already off again.

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Yuuji & Hana  
>  #prematureacceleration  
>  Currently in fourth place **

 

Daishou pulls out an envelope from the grill right next to the one Yuuji is currently searching through. He swears under his breath, _he was so close_ , but it's apparently loud enough for Daishou to turn around and smirk at him before he turns towards his own camera to read it out.

Not now, not yet. There's no point in Yuuji listening to what they're talking about if he doesn't actually have the clue yet.

"Let's do the harp," he hears, as much as he doesn't want to. He moves onto another section filled with yet more grills and hopes that luck will be on his side this time.

Especially now that the others are sliding in to join them in searching out for clues as well.

He can't let them find the clue first, he wants to be ahead of at least one team. Plus, there are only three clues left in what has to be over fifty grills, if the others find one first, the chance of him finding one drops — he has to keep the advantage he has, the others don't know what grills have already been searched.

Neither do he and Hana.

Daishou had run from over here when Michimiya shouted. They probably already searched at least half of the grills on this side, but Yuuji doesn't know which ones and it means he has to search through them all.

He opens the lids of the grills, he opens up the cabinets where the gas sits, he rips open the backs — nothing. He watches Hana do the same next to him on the last grill in this area and— nothing again. They carefully manoeuvre through the mess of poles around them to a new section of grills.

Yuuji opens up another, and out of the quick habit built up over the last few minutes, he almost slams the lid shut again. Almost, but amidst the darkness of the interior, the glossy yellow envelope shines under his torchlight. "Hana!" She doesn't answer, not with words, she just bustles around the grills between them, ducks under poles, and when she's standing beside him and the camera points down at their faces Yuuji rips into the envelope - a little too excited to care that he rips off the entire back side of it.

"Stacked up or strung out?" Hana reads off the paper.

Yuuji skims through the directions, the answer is obvious, ”we're definitely stacked up!" He pulls a face at the way Hana eyes him up after the statement.

"Well then, let's go!"

Yuuji pushes past Bokuto where he's slamming down the tops of grills and races his way up and down the slide. Hana isn't quite as fast in navigating the space between all of the playground pieces. “I’m pretty sure Daishou’s going to the harp one."

Hana nods in return as she slips down the slide. "I think everyone else is probably going to be doing watermelons too. So let's hurry now and make sure to stay ahead of them!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in fifth place**

 

Tooru is quiet as he sneaks up on Bokuto. Playfully, he winks to the camera and waves around the envelope in his hand. Conspiratorially, he pulls a finger to his lips to shush both the camera and the audience at home as well.

Tooru drapes himself dramatically over Bokuto's back, feels Bokuto stiffen underneath him and he winks once more at the camera as it moves from following him across the yard to setting up a good angle on Bokuto's face in order to catch his reaction.

"Oikawa what the fuck? We're meant to be looking!" Bokuto grunts out. Oikawa doesn't let the tone of Bokuto's voice phase him. He's about to make Bokuto's night.

"I know," Tooru sings, and Bokuto must be used to his weight now, steady. Tooru pushes off with his feet and clings tight with one arm around Bokuto's chest so he can wrap his legs up around Bokuto's hips. He waits for Bokuto to settle into the weight once more before bringing his other arm around to wave the envelope in his face. "We're looking for this right!" He can feel the way the smug grin pulls across his lips, but not for long.

In one smooth movement that Tooru doesn't have the time to register he is swung around to Bokuto's chest, what feels like his entire face pressed against Bokuto's lips. Tooru rearranges himself and presses back hard for a good few seconds before pulling away to find soft eyes and a light smile greeting him. "Good work Oikawa!"

Tooru's smile back must be blinding, because it makes Bokuto's even more so.

He does, in time, with another kiss and a cough he's pretty sure comes from behind the camera, unwind his legs and slide down Bokuto's body to land on the ground. He hands off the envelope off to Bokuto who tears it off happily.

"Stacked up or strung out?" He reads, "what do you think?"

Bokuto hands Tooru the paper from inside and he reads through the instructions. 

Tooru knows what task Bokuto wants to do, he knows, but they're already basically in last place. They need to think about more than what will be fun. "Have you ever strung an instrument together?" Bokuto shakes his head, Tooru hasn't either, but, "if everyone else is doing the watermelon thing," which Tooru highly suspects is the case, "we might be better off trying the harp thing to get ahead."

Bokuto stands up and stretches to his full height. Tooru doesn't have to look to know that he's flexing his muscles. He doesn't have to look and know right now, he hopes the camera catches it and keeps it for him to watch later.

"I know," Tooru concedes, "but stacking in the way the locals do has to be something ridiculous," and something almost impossible to stack. "What if it falls?"

Bokuto slumps down to hunch next to Tooru over the paper in his hands. "So the harp thing then?"

"I think it's the best way to go," Tooru says, "and I am pretty good with my hands."

Bokuto winks and Tooru hits him on the arm. He can't do that, this is a family show, his parents are going to watch, his brother, Takeru.

"Strung out it is," Bokuto says quietly and Tooru sneers as he pushes past a still looking Kuroo and Ushijima to get back to the exit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Tetsurou & Wakatoshi  
>  #VO2themax  
>  Currently in sixth place **

 

"Fuck, fuck, and fuck this shit in particular!" Kuroo shouts to the void of the night as he slams down the lid of another grill, and Wakatoshi lets him. If it helps, then it's fine to let off steam. He'd rather Kuroo let it out here than at someone else later. This is healthy.

"We should try to find one quickly, everyone else has left already."

"I know," Kuroo shouts back, "that doesn't help us look any faster, oh!" Kuroo waves with something in his hand and this has been his life for what seems like forever at this point, so even though he can't actually see what's in Kuroo's hand, Wakatoshi knows.

"Get over here!" Wakatoshi tries, but he has also seen the way some of the others navigated this maze of children's playgrounds, and it is simply not made for someone of his size and bulk to traverse easily.

Kuroo meets him halfway, which actually takes him a bit further away from the exit.

Kuroo doesn't wait once they're next to each other to rip into the envelope. "Stacked up or strung out?" He races through reading the introduction to each task. “Stacked up: make your way to Mercado Central de Abasto. Once there, stack watermelons in the same way as the local vendors. Strung out: make your way to the Campus of the Universidad Nacional de Asuncion in San Lorenzo. Once there, correctly string the national instrument of Paraguay - the harp!” Kuroo barely pauses to take a breath, “easy, stacked." Wakatoshi watches as Kuroo picks his head up to talk into the camera. "Have you seen us, of course we're stacked." 

Wakatoshi hasn't even been able to read anything beyond the title, and Kuroo's words are too quick for him to be able to listen in to what they actually need to do but he trusts in Kuroo's decision. He usually makes the right choice.

"Let's move quickly," Wakatoshi says, "Oikawa can't be that much further ahead of us, they only just left."

"I swear you have only one thing on the mind at all times," Kuroo sighs as they make their way to the exit, "and it is always the same thing."

Wakatoshi takes the slide sideways, it's too small for him to slip down the way Kuroo does, and when he alights at the bottom it is just in time to see the rear lights of Oikawa's taxi pulling away into the dark of the night. He watches the red of its lights disappear down the street.

"Come on, come on," Kuroo shouts at him, “get moving and we can catch up! Follow that taxi!"

Kuroo pushes him through the back door of the car, and it starts moving before their filming team is even properly seated. "It's like a movie!" The taxi driver shouts and Wakatoshi mostly ignores him in favour of making sure that the audio guy in the seat next to him is okay. He looks kind of rumpled. Kuroo reaches around the seat in front of him to grip onto the taxi driver's shoulder.

"Just like the movies, stay on it!" 

Wakatoshi's stomach finds it’s way up to his throat with the way the taxi driver takes corners and ignores all the traffic laws Wakatoshi has ever been made aware of. Sure, it's the middle of the night and these are probably his local roads, but Wakatoshi's body doesn't settle down until the other taxi cruises along in sight and just in front of them and has their own driver slow down to settle into what must be a more legal speed to tail behind it.

He lets out a long slow breath as he sees the speedometer drops down to a simple ten kilometres over the limit of the sign their passing.

One of these days, he might actually have a heart attack.

  

 

 

 

 

 

> **Kenji & Mai**  
>  **#servedwithice**  
>  **Currently in first place**

 

"There it is,” Futakuchi says, "La Estrella." Mai peeks out of the window at the what must be the market. It’s hard to see through through the combination of the reflective windows and the almost pitch darkness outside. Just barely, though, she can make out characters similar to those on the paper in her hands. And it might be her imagination, but she feels like there are lights further on ahead spilling onto a floor they can’t see.

"Come on," she says, "we have to go and find the watermelons." In the largest market there is. _Simple_. And it's the middle of the night to add to boot.

"What the fucking shit!" Futakuchi says quietly, but it's enough to have Mai reeling. Doubly so when she catches up to him. 

In the car, they read through the additional information, and sure, knowing that they were stacking them up into a pyramid initially made it seem like the wrong choice, but they had still been confident they could do it. 

Being here, and walking by tent after tent after tent stacked up high with pyramid after pyramid of fruit after fruit, and then seeing the stack of watermelons really drives home what it is they're actually going to be doing. 

And it's not even with square watermelons. 

Somehow they have to keep a pyramid steady with rounded watermelons stacked up and up and up and—

Mai doesn't want to think about the logistics of what they're doing, she just wants to be done with it. "We need to find the marked trucks."

"I think it's up here," Futakuchi calls, weaving between carts and empty fruit stands as he jogs through the market. Mai can see why he thinks it's up here. The flooding lights were real, and further up they light up what otherwise seems like a completely random space in the otherwise dark market. It's a siren call and they are on their way. "It is! Deposito de Frutas!" He reads slowly off the sign ahead of them.

"How exactly are we meant to do this?" Mai asks. Ahead of them, four giant trucks are absolutely filled to the brim with watermelons.

"Well," in one swift movement Futakuchi has one arm under her knees and one wrapped around her shoulder and Mai lets out an undignified squeak at the way she has suddenly left the ground. Futakuchi takes a couple of steps over to a different truck, one less full than the others, and lifts her up above the bed. “You jump up there,” he deposits her gently onto the truck, “and roll the watermelons down to me."

Mai does as he says, and by the time she has crawled along the bed, dusted herself off, and gotten hold of a watermelon Futakuchi is standing at the end of the truck, hands out, waiting to receive.

"Just go?"

"Just go," he says.

Mai picks out a watermelon from the top of the pile where she is, but still low enough down that she doesn't need to stand. She gives it a gentle roll down the bed towards Futakuchi. It stops halfway and he has to jump up into the bed himself to collect it. "A little bit harder next time."

"Right," Mai pushes the next watermelon towards him with a lot more force. The watermelons are heavy, they roll easily, but it almost seems like the back of the truck is higher than the front because it takes a lot more effort than she expected to continue rolling them all up to where Futakuchi is collecting them. "This is," she puffs out, "really draining." All she's doing is rolling watermelons off a truck, but in the warm night and with the exertion she's putting in, Mai can already feel sweat pooling in the small of her back.

"Keep it up! You're doing great!" Mai appreciates the words, even as she doesn't waste the energy needed to reply to them. She has to save herself for restacking them down on the floor.

"We're ready!" Which is now.

They work together, laying everything down. Mai lays out two sides and Futakuchi lays out another two. When the border for their pyramid is complete, Mai quickly moves around the square and counts out each watermelon, "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten!"

Futakuchi starts layering up the inside and Mai hands the watermelons to him as he needs them. Already Mai can tell that this is more draining than she thought even from a few moments earlier. Not only are they carrying the watermelons around, but her mind isn't going to let them simply fill in the base and work up. Mai knows that she is going to obsessively count every single row and column of watermelons they place in.

The night is going to be a long one.

  

 

 

 

 

> **Daichi & Yui**  
>  **#quadsoffury**  
>  **Currently in second place**

 

"So," Yui says, hands on her hips she pulls her gaze from truck to truck,all of them almost overflowing with watermelons, "how do we do this?"

Daichi looks around them to see what Futakuchi and Mai are up to. Yui turns too. They have a small cart by them with watermelons balanced on top of it. Yui searches around the area and between trucks for a cart of their own. Daichi ends up finding them and wheels one over from where they stand, one for each of the tarpaulins spread out and lit up for them. Yui feels her face heat up and hopes that it's too dark for anyone to see. She also hopes that the cameras followed Sawamura just now instead of following her on her fruitless journey in and around the trucks.

Daichi rests his hands on the bed of the truck and hefts himself up. He picks up a watermelon and weighs it in one hand. "I'm going to throw them to you Yui, and you start loading them up onto the cart."

"Gotcha!" She cheers, one hand held up to her head in a salute quickly before getting ready to catch. 

The watermelons are heavier than she expected them to be. It feels like they're a good few kilo's each. Still, Yui doesn't let their weight deter her. She's spent far too much time in her life dealing with bruised and battered arms, this isn't anything new. She stacks the watermelons up on the cart, first filling in the ridge that lines the bed of it and then stacking them up between the gaps. She doesn't know how many are actually in the cart when she calls out for Daichi to stop throwing watermelons down to her.

She wheels the cart around and Sawamura runs in front of it to make sure that the way through is clear. "So," he says, "we start off with ten by ten, and then nine by nine, all the way up yeah?"

"Yes," Yui says. "Here, I'll catch again."

She stands along the opposite side of the tarpaulin to where Daichi stands with their cart. "Don't drop it!" He commands firmly, Yui wouldn't dare.

"One!" He calls throwing the watermelon across the tarp.

"Oof!" It's harder to catch when it's coming from further away, isn't just dropping them into her arms, but Yui keeps her body behind the trajectory and nestles it safely into her arms. "One!" She calls back as she places it down.

"Two!" Daichi calls.

"Two!" Yui repeats, laying watermelon down next to the first one she placed.

"Three!" 

"Three!" They're starting to get a line.

The calls help, they keep her on track.

"Eleven!" Yui turns down the bottom of the tarp and puts the watermelon down on the corner.

"Twelve!" She places the next one going back up the line, moving closer to Daichi with each throw. 

At twenty-four they have to wheel their cart back the short distance to the truck. This is going to take a while, and she's already started sweating.

The next load they bring over has more on it, the watermelons packed together tightly so that hopefully, they'll have fewer trips to make. 

"Here!" Daichi calls, throwing out a watermelon. Yui finishes off another line, but with the next watermelon afterwards she starts making up a border to fill in.

Another cart.

"We have to lay them down flat," she says to Daichi, who this time is helping her fill in the border.

"All the way across?"

"All the way across, make sure you count out each line as well before you move onto a new one. Keep them straight!"

Yui sets the last watermelon into the hole left for it, and pumps her fist in the air. A small celebration. She clings to Daichi's side as he wheels the cart back to the truck, "we got the base done before everyone else!"

Daichi smiles at her, it's all at once warm and comforting and energising. "Only nine more layers to go!" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Suguru & Mika**  
>  **#solemates**  
>  **Currently in third place**

 

Soft music plays through the hall they walk into. The show has managed to get one person to stay up late into the night — to get up early in the morning? — to play the harp for them while they restring their own. It adds to the atmosphere. Suguru walks down the aisle between the seats hand in hand with Mika towards the stage where a step below the harpist plucking the strings for them sit six harps, broken and waiting to be put back together by their weary hands. Suguru is trusting Mika a lot in choosing this task. She's the artsy one, and she's stringed a few instruments during her time in the brass band in middle school and he hopes that's a skill that stays with a person.

"What the fuck," Suguru is shocked into taking a closer look at the harps with Mika's words.

"What happened to them?"  They're a mess. The strings of the harp are tied up in knots, every single one of them. Ties up and bundled up in a mess and knotted together. This isn't just a string the harp challenge. This is a sort this mess out and then string the harp challenge. "Where do we even start?"

Mika plucks at the end of a string she's managed to find. "Well," she says, "first things first, we have to untangle everything. Find somewhere to start."

Suguru immediately runs his hands along the strings knotted up in front of him, Mika starts pushing her string through the knot, finding it elsewhere, and pulling it through. Right, unknotting is an easy enough thing to do. He doesn't know why he's overthinking this. It's like fifty pairs of headphones were left in a bag overnight and now he has to separate them all. Untangling everything isn't going to be hard, it's only going to be frustrating, a test of his patience.

He halts his thoughts when he finds an end. The soft notes of the harp come through his mind. This is what he has to focus on. He doesn't need to think about time passing, or wondering what the other task would have been like — easier? harder? did they pick right? — all he needs to do is focus on the music in his ears, soft and soothing, and the immediate task at hand. 

He winds the string in his hand over and under and through other knots until it springs free. Carefully, he lays it out down the side of the harp. Hopefully, it won't get caught up in the mess again.

"If you can," Mika says, "and it might be a bit hard but if you can, try and find the strings that are at either end." Suguru watches her try to follow the string for the head of the harp through the mess. "If we can untangle them in order I can string them up while you keep untangling. It'll help things go quicker."

Suguru doesn't look at her, his head is already down, finger on the string that feeds into the very bottom of the harp and trying to follow it along. He smiles to himself for her quick thinking under the pressure and the stress and the exhaustion already of the day and hopes she knows it's there. She should.

"Here," he says, when he's managed the first string.

Mika presses lips to his shoulder and pulls the string tight through the wood of the harp. "Thanks," her hand works on twisting the string into place and Suguru goes straight back into looking for the next string in line. He doesn't have it out before Mika is finished and she goes back to working along the top of the harp. Pulling some of the smaller strings free and tightening them into place.

The door swings open with a loud bang that has the harpist skipping several notes before their fingers work back at the soft tune. Suguru feeds a newly freed string up to Mika for her to lace through and watches to see who comes in. Bokuto and Oikawa step through the doors and it's more than a little surprising. Kuroo and Ushijima step through shortly afterwards and that surprises him even more. He was so sure that both of these teams would be doing the physical task, he would have preferred doing the physical task if it wasn't for the fact that he knows Mika knows how to string an instrument up. 

So far her words have been proved true and Suguru is happy they chose this task. 

Bokuto and Oikawa though, Kuroo and Ushijima? He doesn't understand what would have them choosing this over the other one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Yuuji & Hana  
>  #prematureacceleration  
>  Currently in fourth place **

 

"There's a fruit market!" Yuuji calls out. "The fruit market! The fruit market!"

Hana slaps a hand over his mouth. "It's the middle of the night you don't need to yell."

There are already cars ahead of them when they arrive, and Hana doesn't think it bodes well for them. The others are here already, and based on the cars and what Yuuji told her earlier, it seems like Daishou and Mika really have gone on to string a harp. Hana is still glad they chose this task, they're still ahead of the two other teams and both of them will probably come here as well. Yuuji didn't want to do anything else but prove how stacked up he was, she can't picture the jocks from the other teams thinking differently.

They're ahead for now, and they just need to stay ahead. It's the big secret that nobody told her, but as long as they don't come last they're fine.

"I'm just excited," Yuuji says between her fingers, his warm breath ghosts wetly over her skin but Hana doesn't let up her grip. "I've never stacked watermelons before, but I guess really is a first time for everything!"

"Just, shh," Hana mimes with her hand, peeling it away from Yuuji's mouth and trusting for him to keep it closed. She mimes again for the taxi to wait for them, and given the parking lot is taken up with two other cabs, the two drivers sharing a cigarette together at a bench next to the entrance, she thinks the message gets through when their own driver reaches for a similar square box from the middle compartment.

Yuuji rushes ahead of her through the market. It's dark, stalls looming, but in no time at all they are blinded by the floodlights beaming down on tarpaulin mats and two half-formed pyramids. Well, they look a lot more complex and massive than expected.

She doesn't like starting out behind them. She doesn't like starting out when they already have so much done — and it's a pyramid they're building, working on the top half takes up much less time than building up the base. Did they really take so long to get here? She didn't feel like they left the metal yard that much after the others... or maybe it's not quite as daunting a task as looking at the half made pyramids seem at a glance.

She hopes it's a case of the latter.

She doesn't like starting out behind them all, but starting out behind them all definitely has its advantages. Hana can see what trucks the others are getting their watermelons from, she can see how they're moving them, she can see how they're placing them. She doesn't know how they started out, but knowing what she can see is still an advantage and she and Yuuji are quick to grab a cart and set to work on loading it up with watermelons.

She tries not to think about how much effort just loading them up is. Yuuji is sweating out through his clothes, lifting up his shirt so often to wipe at his face that Hana doesn't think it can even still be dry enough to be effective. "Are you okay?" She has water on her, a couple of bottles. It'll be hard to replenish them in the middle of the night but she'd rather Yuuji stay hydrated than collapse on her. 

"I'm okay!" He calls down from the truck. "Just hot, hotter than a new love!"

The jokes on her for worrying about him.

With the cart full, she lets Yuuji push it around to an empty space on the ground for them to finally beginning stacking up their own pyramid. It's overwhelming. The other two teams are shouting out words of encouragement to each other and Yuuji is counting out loud as he places watermelons down and she has to count in her own head for her line of watermelons and crew members are rushing around beyond them and it's hard for her to concentrate.

"How do we...?" She trails off, she doesn't know what she wanted to ask. She doesn't remember.

"You stack them right here," Yuuji says, "like this," he demonstrates, "get them up on their butts." He stands the watermelons up in the middle of their border, lining them up next to each other so that they stand tall into the air.

"Okay," Hana replies, "okay." It's overwhelming, she's too overwhelmed.

Another rush back to the truck, weaving in between the others, properly seeing just how much it is they've accomplished compared to the others. They're so far behind. They'll never catch up. The others haven't shown up yet. Maybe it wasn't that they got lost on the way here, maybe it's actually a much further drive than she remembers. She doesn't know. It's already beginning to feel a lot like watermelon stacking is all she's ever known.

Except for the part where they suck at it.

"We have to tighten these up!" There are gaps in their base. The watermelons knocking into each other. The edge of their pyramid is dangerously close to rolling away with every new watermelon they place on top of their base layer.

"No we don't!"

"Yes we do, they'll fall!" Hana hates the screech of her voice through the night. Tearing through the low murmurs of the others around her. "Just," Hana lets out a deep breath, her frustration billowing out into the night, "can we tighten them up, please? It'll really help me feel better."

There's a moment of silence, Yuuji stares at her and Hana can't read what's in his eyes beyond exhaustion, a similar frustration, the knowledge that this task has turned out much harder than planned. 

"Look," Yuuji says, "just push in at the edges, the spaces mean there's more space for the next layer to sit between just," he picks up a watermelon, "take it and do what we've signed ourselves up for." 

Hana's head snaps back, there's a crack, but not from her. Her head hurts, there's a ringing in her ears, and when she opens her eyes from where she doesn't even remember closing them it's to see Yuuji looking at her with wide eyes. She doesn't know what happened at all except— except for the cracked watermelon on the floor. And Yuuji's wide eyes. And...

"Ow! Yuuji! What the fuck! Come on!" She's frustrated too, but she's not resorting to throwing the watermelons at anyone. It hasn't even crossed her mind. The watermelon on the floor is another one that they're going to have to add to their cart the next time they go over. It's doing one more task than necessary, and wasting the fruit is more than just a little unnecessary.

"Sorry," Yuuji says meekly.

"Just watch out, _please,_ " she stresses.

"I was just tossing it to you," Yuuji says, sounding defensive.

"I wasn't ready!" Did she even look ready? Yuuji didn't give her any warning before throwing a watermelon — no matter what Yuuji is going to claim — _at_ her rather than _to_ her. And now they've just wasted a good few more minutes arguing over it. "Let's just," a deep breath, frustration, as just proven, leads nowhere, "let's just keep going."

 

  

 

 

 

> ** Tetsurou & Wakatoshi  
>  #VO2themax  
>  Currently in sixth place **

 

"Why did we follow them?" Tetsurou bashes his head on the headrest in front of him. "Why did we do that?"

Ushijima shifts in the set next to him, and before he speaks Tetsurou knows that he isn't going to enjoy whatever it is he's about he say. He knows because he's already been lamenting the fact himself as soon as they had to get back in the car and turn around. "You were the one who asked the driver to follow them."

Tetsurou sighs. It's all he can do now. He brought it on himself. How was he supposed to know that Bokuto and Oikawa would choose to string a harp? Why would they choose to string up a harp? Who came up with that? Who's idea was it? Tetsurou was so sure they would have gone stacking up watermelons. So sure he didn't even consider the actual alternative of them deciding to choose the other task. Was it to get ahead? Everyone else is stacking watermelons, they have to be. Tetsurou is much more sure of this fact. Have he and Ushijima made a mistake then? By going back? Would stringing a harp have been easier? Is that what Bokuto and Oikawa are counting on? He sighs again. They're already on the way back. They can't waste all of their time driving around in taxis.

They're on the way to the watermelons now. They've made their decision a second time. They could have stayed. They didn't.

These are their choices and now Tetsurou can only hope that the choice was right.

Tetsurou bashes his head once more on the headrest. He groans, not from pain, and he hopes. "Aaarghh, why!"

Ushijima, wisely, says nothing at Tetsurou's outburst and the rest of the journey passes in a stunted silence. Nobody says anything until eventually, Ushijima taps him on the shoulder to say they've arrived.

"Okay," Tetsurou says, "okay." He has to pump himself up again. He's so frustrated, at himself, he's lost all the energy he had just a short few minutes ago. Another sigh. Only a few minutes ago he was excited and confident and now he just feels nothing, almost nothing. Just the frustration. He's not excited he just wants to get the task done. Move on, hopefully to another day and another leg and hopefully putting the last half an hour behind them. "How many people are here?"

"There are three other cars."

Three cars, three teams. One other team chose to do the music one. Tetsurou can easily guess at who it was.

And he's right, and he hates everything.

Three teams, the last of which already having three layers of a pyramid built up — so they have to stack them in a pyramid? — and the other two teams are already way ahead of even that. They have a lot of catching up to do. Tetsurou thinks they'll be able to do it well enough though. The girls in the other teams look to be struggling beneath the weight of the watermelons, and Tetsurou doesn't recall watermelons as being particularly heavy, but their team doesn't have a girl. Their team has him and Ushijima and they're not going to lose in a physical competition anytime soon.

Nobody would ever let him live it down. 

"Ushijima!"

"Yes?" 

Tetsurou jumps up onto the back of a truck and starts collecting watermelons under his arms. "Let's get moving!"  

Ushijima rolls over the cart to the back of the truck and Tetsurou dumps his load of watermelons directly into Ushijima's arms. Who in one smooth motion bends down to place them on the bed of the cart as well. 

Easy. This will be easy. They've wasted time in the car but they can make up time here. They don't need to hand off the watermelons one by one. They can work five by five, more perhaps if Tetsurou picks up more, but this is where things start going they're way today. They've dealt with their bad decisions, his bad decision, and everything is looking up from here on in. 

"Ten by ten, to start off with then!" Tetsurou works on laying out rows of watermelons while Ushijima cycles through loading the cart, wheeling it to him, and unloading it. This is what having two guys on a team does. In what feels like no time at all — and the progress on other pyramids in the same time has Tetsurou thinking that his sense of time isn't completely out of whack — they have a bed of one hundred green watermelons, ready and waited to be laid upon with more and more and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Daichi & Yui**  
>  **#quadsoffury**  
>  **Currently in first place**

 

"We have three more rows to go," Daichi says under his breath. He thinks they're doing well. "Three more to go," he says again to Yui. She smiles at him and together they rush the cart back to the truck for what should be the last load of watermelons they need. They're nearly there. Quicker than Daichi realistically expected for them to be done.

With a more than a steady hand, Daichi places more watermelons onto the pile, and just as slowly Yui replaces the one added to their pyramid with one from the cart. They work one at a time now. The last thing Daichi wants is for them to bump hands and accidentally knock the thing to the ground. Yui is not the most graceful of beings, and with the added pressure of the task, the challenge has fallen to him to reach up and lay the last few watermelons for their pyramid.

"Two more," she says, and Daichi can hear the awe in her voice, the wonder, the fear. They're so close, and honestly, it hasn't been that hard. They've managed to race past Futakuchi and Nametsu while staying well ahead of the others in this building game, and Daichi has a feeling, deep in his chest, that maybe today is the day they've been waiting for. Today the light shines on them and everything is working. Everything is moving smoothly.

Yui hands over another watermelon and Daichi places it into its spot on top of all the rest. Their rhythm is tight, and soon Daichi is placing down another one. This row only needs four.

And then there's one.

"One more," he says.

"Be careful," Yui responds.

And Daichi feels the pressure in his shoulders, in the dead weight of his arm after racing from a long flight, landing in the middle of the night, and being sent to do this straight away. Physical, manual labour. Watermelon after watermelon after watermelon. He's probably lifted an entire weight session tonight just in watermelons, he hopes the muscles come through, he hopes they'll show, but more importantly, Daichi hopes they'll obey him just for this last second.

His hand shakes as he holds his arms out into the air. The watermelon trembles and Daichi is scared he's going to drop it. That everything they've just done is going to crumble to pieces around them. His fault, it will be all his fault if they mess up now — there's literally nobody else to blame.

From the corner of his eyes he can see the other pyramids, still a few levels behind them, and Yui chewing on her nails. It's a bad habit. She has to stop. And he has to get this right.

Daichi feels the resistance of the pyramid as he rests the last watermelon on top. He pulls his hand away, gently, slowly. He rests the final watermelon against his fingertips — it doesn't seem like it's going to move.

He pulls his hand away, and for a catch of his breath the watermelon moves, but then it settles into place and Daichi knows they're done because Yui is cheering in his ears.

"Yes! Yes! Yes! We're done! We're done! We're done! Check? Check?"

Yui jumps around, and Daichi feels a new energy flowing through his arteries, ready to push him on. He's going to make tonight they're night, and for the first time, he feels the happiness that Yui exhibits every single second she's alive. Without wanting to, Daichi jumps in place, hands swinging out to catch Yui's own, holding her, spinning her around.

"Yes." The one words means so much.

"We did it!" Daichi lifts her into the air and spins her around for as long as it takes for Yui to ask to be put down. His cheeks hurt from the force of his smile, his laughter, his cheer; the outright joy he feels in this moment. It's only as Yui pulls that Daichi is reminded they are not the only ones here. Eyes are on them, everyone's eyes. On them, on their stack of watermelons, on their celebrations. They're probably an annoyance to everyone but for one of the first times in his life, Daichi doesn't care about being obnoxious.

"We have to get the clue!" 

Daichi doesn't know how he forgot. Already the market attendant is standing in front of them — how long he's been there Daichi doesn't know, but now that Daichi knows he's there, yellow envelope already outstretched and seeming to glow in his new one-track vision: t They're going to win today.

Yui drags him by their still clasped hands to reach out for their prize, "thank you, thank you, thank you," he chants, a continuous rhythm. Yui says it only once before she tears open the envelope.

She opens her mouth, about to speak, but Daichi drags them away.

"Not where the others can hear."

Already they all seem to be back at work. Knowledge that the task can be completed fueling them on. And this time, they're the ones being chased. They're in the lead. And Daichi doesn't want anyone to know where it is they're heading next.

"Oh my, oh my, oh my," where their hands are connected Daichi can feel his own shake, and with it, Yui's in his. He doesn't know who the shaking is coming from. But it is excitement, anticipation, and Yui continues reading where before Daichi cut her off. "Make your way to Plaza de la Democracia."

The words mean nothing to him, except one thing: they have to make their way there. A place. "Quick, let's get back to the taxis!" 

Yui's thoughts are far ahead of his own. By the time he's out of his thoughts and back in the game their surroundings are dark and the entrance to the market lies directly ahead of them. The abrupt change of scenery without his notice is grounding; this is why he doesn't let himself fall into his emotions, it takes him away from the task at hand.

Now that he's aware of himself again, he adds his own legs to the pace Yui has set up just to get them away from the market and then they're rushing towards their taxi and waiting for the driver to stamp out their cigarette. "Plaza de la Democracia!" Daichi ends up shouting at them, as Yui drags him into the back seat of the car. He hopes he got the words right. He still hasn't seen their clue, he's only heard what Michimiya said earlier.

"Stacking fruit!" Yui breathes out once they're on their way, "that was fun! Now my parents can't yell at me for never understanding what they do every day!"

Stacking fruit once is a little different to stacking fruit every day at the store her family runs, but Daichi has to give it to her that he's never seen anything at her family's store stacked quite the same way they apparently do it here. "Well," he says instead, "that's one thing to cross off your bucket list!" He knows they were the right words to say when Yui sends a giant grin his way. 

"It's the roadblock next, what do you think we're doing?"

He has no idea. It's the middle of the night and they're going to a plaza. Outdoors. It could be anything. They could just be headed towards a route marker. They could be heading towards a wait — he hopes not. He doesn't want for them to have moved ahead only to be forced to wait for daylight in order to continue on. He doesn't want the others to catch up to them. "It doesn't matter," he says, "we just have to dominate. We picked the right challenge just now, we did it perfectly. We just have to think about getting to the next clue and getting it done and staying ahead." The words sound clipped in his mind. They have Yui settling back into her seat and staring ahead out the front of the car. Daichi almost thinks he's broken her until a familiar sound resounds from her cheeks leaving red marks across them.

"Okay," is all she says.

Daichi keeps his eyes peeled out the window of the car. He doesn't know if it's going to take five minutes or fifty to get to the plaza they're heading to next, and while the taxi driver undoubtedly knows these roads better than he does, Daichi is not going to miss any sign along the way that may point them in the right direction.

It doesn't work. He drifts off. It's only the feel of the road slowing down beneath them that alerts him to wakefulness again. Just in time to see them drive by a sign that reads off the exact same words on the piece of paper in front of him.

The car pulls to a stop shortly after they pass the sign, Daichi asks the driver to wait for them again as he and Yui stumble out.

"Can you see anything?"

"I see it!" Is Yui's answer, and Daichi follows her as she runs across the paved ground to where the clue box stands across from them. "I see it!" She shouts again, even though they're both already running for it. 

Daichi lifts at the lid and Yui reaches inside, tearing it open at the same time she pulls it from the box. Daichi makes a note that there are still a lot of clues in there. They beat everyone at stacking watermelons, but there are still more clues than that in there, they might have beaten out the music challenge as well.

"Roadblock." Yui reads out. "Who's ready to use their head?" They look at each other for a moment, questions in both of their eyes. What is the task? How are they feeling? Are they too tired to focus on it? "You do it," Yui ends up saying into the silence, "you're smarter than me."

"What?"

Yui nods, just once, hard. She's decided on this. Her money is going on a mental challenge and while Daichi might one-up her in this area, he's not sure how well he's going to be able to use his head given his exhaustion. It takes over all thoughts of everything else.

— but Yui wants him to do it. She's asked for him to do it, and that means that she could be feeling even worse off than he is.

"Okay," he says, resolve kicking in. He wants that first place finish. "I'm doing it." He opens up the rest of the clue. "Fuck." Is his first thought. He holds the paper out so Yui can read through it over his shoulder as well. "Take part in the bottle dance, a Paraguayan tradition."

As if they were waiting for them — and they probably were — music starts up and he and Yui walk to the nearby railing to look down over an even bigger expanse of the plaza. Below them, a small group of girls dance around in swaying dresses. Daichi is not much of a dancer. Even worse, the bottles. "Bottle dance," Yui whispers under her breath, and Daichi can hear the awe in her words. The girls below dance smoothly, swaying around, swishing their dresses, ducking and twirling and bending and all with bottles balanced precariously on top of their heads. One bottle, two bottles, three bottles even in some cases.

And the funny thing is that Daichi is not a dancer, but given the balance required for the task, he would not want Yui to be performing this task either.

"You'll be fine," she says, "you have a big head."

"Thanks," he thinks, "I better be all right," he doesn't want to lose their lead to a two-hour penalty if he can't get the dance done after going through all of the bottles he's given.

Yui sits herself down on a seat overlooking the plaza where everyone is dancing and Daichi hands off his own stuff to jog down the stairs and join them. The problem with this task, that he sees, is his want to finish up fast. If he doesn't take the time to move through things with care, if he rushes the dance, the bottle is not going to stay in place on his head.

He watches some of the girls dance lying on the floor, and he'd counted three bottles from up where Yui is sitting but now that he's closer Daichi can see some girls carrying even more. Four, five, six, he doesn't understand how they even get all the bottles up there to even have a chance at balancing them.

Daichi picks up one bottle from a table, he doesn't count how many are there, he doesn't want to know, he doesn't want to have to know, and one of the dancers approaches him, one bottle perched atop the crown of her head. Okay, that's okay, he can maybe do one, he was scared of having to carry as many as some of the others were. Luckily he only has to do the beginners dance.

She stands in front of him, moving slowly through a routine, and Daichi tries his best to copy it.

He doesn't get far. He places the bottle on his head and with one step it crashes to the floor at his feet.

"Come on Daichi! You can do it!" He hopes Yui's belief in him is real and not unfounded. He thought the dance looked hard, but trying to actually perform it is even harder than it looked.

Another bottle to his head, and this time he gets more steps in before it crashes. The next bottle he picks up falls to pieces before he's even placed it on his head. Another couple of bottles fall apart just as he steps into the dance. It's impossible, this is impossible. There's no way he's going to be able to swing around the way the girls are, dropping the ground and waving his body around, all while balancing a bottle on his head. It's not something his body was made to do.

"Deep breaths Daichi! Work through it slowly!"

He's soaking wet at this point, half the bottles from the table are gone. The water within them depositing half over the floor around him and the rest dripping down his face and shirt.

"Deep breaths," he repeats to himself, "slowly." He thinks about what he's just done, delicately placing watermelons one atop the other for what has to have been at least an hour. He just has to do the same again. Slow and deliberate movements. He knows already that the bottles are fragile. Moving quickly is not going to help them balance it's only going to make them more likely to fracture as they bump against his head or the wind or a bug flying past.

A deep breath, he reminds himself, following through on the action this time. As he breathes out he raises his arms slowly and presses another bottle to sit on top of his head. He follows the directions of the dancer in front of him and miracle of all miracles he's down to his knees by the time the bottle crashes to the floor this time.

"You're doing good Daichi! You've got this! You're so close now!"

He was, he is. He went from barely getting the dance started to completing all of the standing motions in one try. He really does just have to focus and move slowly. He doesn't have to dance at the same speed as everyone moving around him. He can move at his own pace and the dancer guiding him will slow to match and he can keep up. He can keep the bottle on his head and he can finish this. He can. He can do this.

It takes another three tries before he's able to get down to his knees and then his stomach on the floor.

Following that it only takes two more tries before he's confident enough to get to the floor everytime. His speed picks up sometimes but Yui's voice is quick to remind him, to breath, to slow down, that they're fine because nobody else is even here yet. There's no need to rush. He doesn't need to. He floats his arms out along the floor, he mimes the breaststroke on the concrete and rises back to his hands and knees. His eyes squeeze shut, all his attention focusing on where the bottle balances on his head and where his body is. All he has to do is stand up.

Yui's screaming cuts through everything and Daichi tears his eyes open, hand reaching up to steady the bottle on his head as he rises only to see a yellow envelope held out in front of him. "You did it!" Daichi can make out through her high-pitched cheers. "You actually did it!" And for all of her encouragement, it sounds to him a little bit like she didn't actually believe it of him. In seconds Yui is standing next to him, so quickly Daichi feels like she jumped down the two storeys from where she'd been watching, "open it, open it, open it!" She says, and Daichi for the first time peels the backing away from the envelope and slides out their next instructions.

"Make your way on foot to the next pit stop," Yui cheers in his ears, and Daichi keeps reading. "Escalinata de Antequera!" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Yuuji & Hana  
>  #prematureacceleration  
>  Currently in fourth place **

 

"It's going good!" Yuuji shouts out, encouraging Hana on, giving himself more energy with the words and volume as well. "Here! Another one!"

It happens in slow motion. First, the one Yuuji has just placed on, just that little bit too hard. It rolls, it falls, another, and more. A cascade of watermelons, rolling off the pyramid they've worked so hard on. A river of watermelons flowing along the floor. He looks up, delayed, to see Hana with her eyes on the pile of watermelons that is left behind. It's wreck. Shapeless. What was halfway to being a glorious pyramid is now a tattered ruin.

"Fuck!" Yuuji kicks at the pile, more watermelons topple down around him but he doesn't care anymore. He swears again, then once more with feeling.

Hana pulls him away from the cracked watermelons, his shoes are covered in juice which he'll probably regret later, but it hasn't yet started seeping. "What are we going to do?"

Yuuji doesn't answer, doesn't have an answer. All he wants to do is keep kicking at the pile of watermelons. He growls out, managing to pull away from Hana's hands and kick at the pile again. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" The words fall on and between kicks, they help. He only has himself to be angry at, he picked this, he fucked this up. He's angry and frustrated and kicking at the pile in front of him keeps him from lashing out elsewhere. It keeps him from shouting out at Hana, who isn't reaching for him again, who must know that he just needs these few moments to himself.

And when he's ready, he reaches out to Hana himself.

"We're going to have to take them all out," Yuuji doesn't want to hear it. "We have to go string the harp."

"We can't! Everyone else is still here!"

"Nobody else is doing it!" Hana shouts at him.

Yuuji stalls in his response. Kuroo and Ushijima are barely tacking together their second layer, Futakuchi and Nametsu are holding on tightly to the base of their stack while watermelons loll on the floor around them.

"We have to go string the harp." Hana repeats. It's not a question, it's not a suggestion, it's a direction. Yuuji doesn't have a say in this. He doesn't feel like he can stack the watermelons up anymore anyhow. They frustrate him too much. Stringing an instrument is going to be frustrating too, he's sure, but at the moment anything sounds better than this. even if he's pissed off that they got so far only to have it all fall down around them.

"Fine." He says. "Let's go. We're switching." There's no point delaying the inevitable now the decision has been made. "Let's get out of here."

He picks up the bag with all their clues stuffed in and follows Hana out of the marketplace. "I never want to see another watermelon again. Do you know where this is?" He asks the taxi driver, pointing to the other detour written down on the paper.

"Yes, you want to go there now?"

"As fast as possible," Hana says, sliding into the back seat of the car. Yuuji would almost think she's calm except for the tacked on, "fuck this sucks," muttered under her breath that he manages to catch. "It does not feel good to know we've just put ourselves back into last place."

"Stringing a harp can't be that hard," Yuuji says, hopes, "they're all probably going to have to end up switching too." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Kenji & Mai**  
>  **#servedwithice**  
>  **Currently in second place**

  

"Oh, oh, oh!" Nametsu steps back, almost tripping over the small pile of watermelons that they're accumulating on the floor rather than on the cart. "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay!"

"What's happening?"

"No, no," the words are neither encouraging nor helpful, "that one moved but it's okay."

"It moved?" Kenji hasn't even thought about the fact that they could move. Yes, he's seen Terushima and Misaki's watermelons wobble around a lot, but they placed them down differently to how he and Nametsu have been settling their own down. Kenji has been careful to make sure that when he places the watermelons down, they stay there. Any sign of movement and he's been quick to reach out a steadying hand. It's been working so far. He doesn't need anything to happen when they're so close to finishing up now. "Be careful!"

"Thanks," Nametsu says, "very encouraging."

Kenji has no idea what kind of words she was after. If she didn't want to be told such a thing, then she shouldn't have alerted him to what was _nearly_ a problem. He doesn't need it in the back of his mind that Nametsu almost had their pyramid falling apart. It's held together in the most delicate balance and Kenji doesn't want anything to upset it.

"Come on," he tries again, "we only have a few more to go."

Four more. They have four more to go. And what he hates more than anything is that they've been overtaken. He doesn't know how. He doesn't know when exactly the taking over took place — he's been far too focused on just making sure that everything was moving upwards nicely — but the cheers cutting through the air mean two things.

Kenji stares at them. Sawamura and Michimiya shouting loudly into the night, spinning around, ignoring the stall owner holding their next card, ignoring the fact that some of them are still trying to finish. They are still trying to finish while Sawamura and Michimiya have finished and Kenji hates that they've been overtaken, the lead snatched so easily from them, but more than anything else the cheering spurs him on.

"Come on," he says, once the cheering settles, once they move on. They need to move on soon as well. With at least two other teams still left here behind them preferably. "If they can finish it, we can too. We just have to focus."

Nametsu mutters something under her breath that he doesn't catch, but she gets to work.

Another row goes up.

_It comes down_.

"Shit."

He steps back from where the watermelons tumble to the floor. And she can't even know what's happening on his side of the pyramid but he sees Nametsu step back as well.

The miracle is that it stops.

There's a beat where they wait. Kenji catches his breath and Nametsu takes slow steps around the wreckage to stand at his side. "Alright," she says, "it's okay."

"What's okay?"

"Fuck!" Sounds from behind him. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" It continues.

Well, Kenji thinks, at least they aren't the only ones.

"We can fix this easily."

"How?" Kenji wants to know, "how do we fix this?"

He certainly doesn't spot an easy way to do so. Not without starting all over again, which at this point, they can't afford to do.

"Don't touch anything," is how it starts, Kenji is already standing three steps back. If there is something to be saved from this mess, he doesn't want to be responsible for having it all topple over even further. "I'm just gonna," with slow and steady hands, steadier than his own feel at the moment, Nametsu clears up the mess he caused. She pulls away the watermelons on the floor and pushes up against the watermelons still collected into the pyramid. Slowly, piece by piece, Kenji catches on to what she's doing.

"I see," she smiles at him then, "what do you want me to do?"

"Hold it," is the command. They juggle around each other so that Kenji can crouch down where Nametsu is sitting. When his hands are in place over where she's holding the base intact she slides her hands and then her body away. "I'm going to make up this side again, if you feel anything moving, let me know, just make a noise, otherwise, silence." Instead of retorting in the way he wants to Kenji bites down on his tongue. He either follows along with this — and he knows this is the best way to get through this — or they switch. He doesn't want to switch. He doesn't want to go from being ahead to voluntarily placing themselves back in last. With the time that has already passed, it's too much time to try and catch up.

He holds, and he watches, and he breathes in and out slowly. Calm, he is calm, and Nametsu is calm, and slowly the damage done is repaired.

"Okay," Nametsu says, "okay, is that stable?"

Kenji takes off one hand first, there's a tremble in his fingers as he itches to reach out and hold again but the pile holds steady. And off comes the other hand. "It's good."

They're back. Three more to go. And this time, they don't rush. Kenji reaches up to the peak with the last watermelon in hand and when it settles into place a weight drops from his shoulders. He didn't expect the task to be so stressful. But at last, "we're done," he exhales a breath, "we're done!" 

His call brings over the marketplace worker and with a tense second followed by the nod of a head they are handed their next clue.

Kenji and Nametsu do not waste time finding somewhere secluded to read it. Without him noticing, Kuroo and Ushijima are the only ones left building, and thus there's no real point to opening the envelope in secret. They are a long way behind. 

"Make your way to Plaza de la Democracia." He reads out, "we can do this, we can catch up." The same fiery determination taking hold in his chest shines back through Nametsu's eyes.

"Come on!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Suguru & Mika**  
>  **#solemates**  
>  **Currently in third place**

 

She feels like this is the detour they're meant to be doing. Mika hasn't strung an instrument up for years, but apparently, the skill has been hidden in the back of her mind this entire time. 

The rhythm they've established to complete the task only helps things. Suguru kneels at the base of the harp, twisting and winding and pulling the strings free of the mess they're in and when he's done, Mika takes the string off of him. She threads the string like a needle through the top section of the harp and then uses the small tool they've been given to pull it through fully to the other side. She connects it up and pulls the strings tight.

When she finishes up one string, Suguru has another waiting to hand off to her.

It's rhythmic, it's calming, it's soothing, it was definitely the better choice to make.

The harpist plays through while they work. The sound bouncing off the walls and saturating the small wooden theatre with an ambient noise that fills her mind. She works, and she takes in her surroundings. The dark wood, the plush red cushions and the deep magenta curtains, the bright lights of the stage and the chandelier hanging over the seats in the auditorium and Mika can only dream of what it would be like to see a real performance here. Magical is how she imagines it. She's in love with the place with harp song filling the air, it only makes sense that a full show could be so much more.

It makes her want to come back.

To see the chairs filled with people, to see the stage awash in lights and people, to see the room dimmed and a story played out in front of her. In music, in story, in song, it doesn't matter, she just wants to come back again.

She rests her hand at her side and in a matter of moments Suguru uses calloused fingers to lay down a newly freed string against her palm. She pushes it and pulls it through and dreams all the while of what might usually show here, when it isn't full of crazy people trying to fix harps broken in a way they should never have been left to experience.

She rests her hand down again, this time, Suguru picks up her hand in his and brings it to his mouth. She feels the words in the breath over her fingers more than she hears it. "That was the last one."

Mika doesn't make a scene. She brings the hand not clasped in Suguru's to her hair, she runs her hand through it. The new motion to the usual routine catches the eye of the instructors who will be judging them and with two fingers Mika waves them over.

Deft fingers pluck at the string of the harp they've just put back together and she waits to the side, hand in hand with Suguru, to find out how well they've done.

Between the soft music playing behind them and the deliberate plucking of strings as their harp is checked out, the bang of the door sounds loudly through the auditorium. Mika turns her head to look, Suguru too, and she is sure Bokuto and Oikawa must also be looking to see what the commotion is.

The door slams a second time as it swings shut to reveal Terushima and Hana skipping down the aisles and up towards the stage.

"Yes!" Terushima cheers. "They're all still here!"

"You are good," the instructor says, and Mika is handed their next clue.

"Fuck a duck!" Hana swears and Mika hides her laughter behind the envelope in her hand. The bright yellow envelope in the dark room that only draws everyone's attention up to where she's practically waving it around.

"Don't worry about it," Suguru says, "it's not that hard." He smirks along with his words, and if the people here no Suguru half as well as she does they can read the challenge in it. Terushima only bumps his fist, accepting the challenging.

"Dude, anything has to be better than those fucking watermelons."

Suguru looks like he wants to stay and chat, forgetting all about what they rushed through stringing the instrument together for. Mika delivers a swift kick to the back of his calves, purposely drawing attention to the bright envelope in her hands this time as the waves it around in the air. "Shall we get going?" Suguru nods and now there are more people here, Mika leads them over to the entrance to tear open the back of the envelope and read off their next instructions. "Make your way to Plaza de la Democracia."

"Come on," Suguru says, pushing at her back, finally back in the game.

"Good luck!" Mika calls out over her shoulder as they're halfway out the door. Bokuto and Oikawa need it, and the sentiment won't hurt Terushima and Hana either.

"This means we're definitely ahead of two teams now."

"And you wanted to stay and chat!" Suguru looks like a deer caught in headlights and is silent until they slide into the back of the taxi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in fifth place**

 

Koutarou regrets his entire life. There's nothing he wants to save in it, there's nothing he's thankful for. Every second of his life leading to this point is what got him here, and he's never hated his life more.

"Stop!"

"Grab it!"

"I see it! I see it!"

"There, grab it!" He's trying.

"Use the hook!" Oikawa is holding the stupid, useless hook.

"What do you want me to do with the fucking hook?" Oikawa mimes out what he wants Koutarou to do. It doesn't help at all except have him think of a few other places he'd rather stick it— he knows what the hook it meant to do but knowing it doesn't he knows how to actually make it work. It would work better with tweezers or something. Something that actually grabs at the string once it's through the hole rather than having to push enough string through that there's a loop for him to grab on to.

"Tweezers?"

Fuck, some of his thoughts have made it to his mouth. "You don't understand!" His fingers are not made for delicate work. The tweezers probably wouldn't even help. Fine motor skills are not his forte.

"It goes under here!" Oikawa twists the piece of string he's working on through Koutarou's hands. It knots in with the bulk of strings still waiting to be unravelled. It twists around the one still in his fingers, the one he's trying desperately to reach at through the mess of knobs and dials along the top of the harp.

"What are you even doing!" He'll have to untwist it again. Wind it out from around where Oikawa decides his own string needs to be.

"It's not that hard!"

"Dammit! Fuck!" He's lost it. He's dropped the string. It's fallen, he's lost it, and Oikawa is still waving hands and string around like it's actually helping so it probably doesn't mean anything anyway that he dropped it. It was already tangled up again.

"You just need to untangle this!" Trust Oikawa to fuck him up in one second and in the next second be able to find the string that was once Koutarou's treasured possession. Nearly pulled through, nearly pulled tight, nearly tied off, nearly done with.

"I wanna untangle this! I did untangle this. You're the one who fucked me up!"

"I didn't! I've been waiting!" Waiting for what? Koutarou wants to know. He hasn't seen Oikawa productive in helping with anything except making the mess of strings an even bigger challenge to take down.

"What are you doing? You have to pull that through!" And he's definitely been stuck looking at it for way too long if he can tell, just with Oikawa pulling on his string just so and weaving it through even more _fucking shit_ , which hole it needs to line up with at the top. He wrestles it from Oikawa's grasp. The string isn't free of the mess, but while he knows where it needs to go Koutarou might as well get them one step in the right direction. The can just weave the other strings around it, and when they're all free, it should be free too. "All right!" 

"Get that through!"

"I just got it through! What are you even talking about? You're not helping anything!"

They don't have a system down at all. Oikawa is doing one thing and he's doing another. And Koutarou thinks they're trying he really does, but for all of Oikawa's talk about being good with his hands — a feat Bokuto would usually attest to — they're struggling. The task is not the easiest thing in the world to do.

"What the fuck?" Oikawa pulls his hands back, takes a step back. Koutarou looks up only briefly to see shock pasted across his face before tucking his face back down to work.

"Shut up!" 

 

  

 

 

 

 

> **Daichi & Yui**  
>  **#quadsoffury**  
>  **Currently in first place**

 

Five blocks seem to be a lot further than it sounded when reading it out. It's probably the time of day, the jet lag — although Yui can’t be sure that heat lag is even a real thing at this point because she doesn't know what time her body is on. All she knows is that five blocks sounded like it should be easy, but even at a slow jog, it's proving itself to be anything but.

Her lungs are dying, screaming, and the protest even more as Yui pushes herself to keep up.

Daichi runs ahead of her, turning around every few seconds to smile at her. And really, it's that smile she's chasing. He doesn't take the time to talk, which means that he's feeling this too, but Yui has known that smile for years and years and years. It's saying that she can do this, it's saying that this is easy, it's saying that today was a day that was made for them to be the best.

And the years and years and years of knowing that smile is years and years and years of Yui knowing that she can't say no to that smile.

She doesn't complain.

Past another door, another tree, another light, the edge of a building another road, another block.

One block less to go.

The burn in her chest doesn't ease, but also, ahead of her, the smile does not let up. It urges her on and pulls her forward and all she wants is to always be caught up in its orbit.

Her bag is heavy, it weighs her down and crashes against her shoulders. She’ll probably have bruises for another month after she gets home. A semi-permanent reminder of this time. 

Worth it, as long as she gets there.

"It's just up here," Daichi puffs out and Yui takes a few steps further to stand with him at the bottom of a giant set of steps.

Up, why is it that they always have to run up?

But—

She can see the lights, the cameras, the spot where the action is soon to be taking place. Yui can see them, and it's a sigh of relief that leaves her. They're standing only half way up the giant flight of stairs. Thank all of the Gods.

They’re running up, as they always seem to do, but they need only make it halfway up.

She counts the steps on the way, to take her mind off the way her breath heaves with each one. Part of the way up Daichi takes her hand, and it helps her to speed up, just a little bit. More energy, someone guiding her, the pull physical and not just in her mind.

He steps simply onto the mat in front of them, but Yui takes the time to pause, drop her bag and jump onto it.

"Welcome to Asuncion, Paraguay," says the prettiest girl Yui has ever seen.

"Thank you," her and Daichi sigh out together.

"This is the least energetic I've ever seen you!" Phil says, and Yui sends him a tired smile to match his words. She’s happy to hear his voice but she still needs to catch her breath a little— a lot— before she can say anything.

"We felt really good about this leg," Daichi answers for her. Yui squeezes at his hand in thanks and then takes it back to place her hands on her head and stretch her chest out. "We didn't want to lose our lead, so we raced hard the whole way here."

"I can see that!" He says, "and I have some great news for you." There's a pause, and Yui vibrates in anticipation of the words her and Daichi worked hard for today, "I am happy to tell you that you are the first team to arrive!" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Tetsurou & Wakatoshi  
>  #VO2themax  
>  Currently in fifth place **

 

"They're leaving," Wakatoshi says, noting the crumpled watermelons that are left behind, "they gave up and they're leaving."

"That's good," Kuroo says, "it means we're ahead of one team now. We're not in last anymore. They'll have to start right from the beginning again at the harp thing." Kuroo places the last watermelon into their second layer. "Done." He raises his hand into the air in celebration and tips the rest of the watermelons from the cart. "Let's grab some more and more sure we stay ahead now. This is the chance we've been waiting for."

Wakatoshi carries the cart over to pick up as many watermelons as he can and delivers them back to where Kuroo is laying down the last few left from the last trip. They're only up to layer three. They're only up to layer three and two more people run past them. This time cheering happily. The actual cheering is quiet but while Kuroo works mostly by himself on the pyramid Wakatoshi has time to look around and see why it is that they're cheering at all. 

"Did they go?" Kuroo asks. 

"Yes," he answers shortly, "they finished."

"Fuck." 

Wakatoshi feels the same way. 

"Did we make a mistake coming back?"

"There's no use thinking _what if_ questions now. We started this, we made the decision already, we're here. One team left and two others finished. This is not an impossible task."

"You're right," Kuroo says, "it's just a long one."

"Which surely means only that the other task is equally as long so as to ensure they are balanced. We know what we're doing here. The task is physical and tedious but we can do it." Wakatoshi has no idea how to string a harp at all. Despite the misgivings over spending so long in the taxi driving to the other detour and back again, he does not feel as if they've chosen the wrong task to complete.  

Kuroo lets out a long breath in no way stopping his workflow, "come on then, let's see what we can do."

It's Wakatoshi's fault. He lifts up one watermelon and presses it into the middle of the pyramid too hard. They expand from the centre, rolling across the tarpaulin and off the tarpaulin. Kuroo steps on one, which cracks beneath his weight and all Wakatoshi can do is drop his face to his hands. "Sorry, I'm sorry." All they have now is one long layer of watermelons. Unfortunately, it's not the method of stacking they are meant to achieve.

"New rule," Kuroo says, "push one hundred of them together, push the others off the side so we know where the base is, and then you aren't allowed to touch it unless you're handing them off to me. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Agree."

"Yes," Wakatoshi admits. 

And this time, Kuroo gives him the pep talk. "Look," he starts, "we know how long it takes to drive to the other detour. So we also know we have a good ten minutes before Terushima and Misaki even start up the other task. We just have to focus and do this and not make any stupid mistakes again.

"I know," Wakatoshi says, "I won't."

 

 

 

 

  

 

> ** Yuuji & Hana  
>  #prematureacceleration  
>  Currently in sixth place **

 

Hana doesn't have to say it out loud, five minutes into the task she looks at Yuuji and she knows he knows what she's thinking.

"Shut it!" He says with half a smile and Hana feels a full one bloom over her own face.

"I never said anything!" She teases.

Yuuji's smile is still there, and under the lights of the stage, the sweat from earlier glistens. On his face, on his arms, on his chest where his shirt dips with the way he sits. "You said plenty." She probably looks far worse than Yuuji does. It's nice here, instead of working in a heat that should not exist in the dead of the night they get to sit beneath an air conditioner that slowly dries the sweat to their skin as it cools them down. 

They work together quickly. Hand over hand, string over string, and earlier, she thought Daishou was teasing them, but this really is quite simple. Plus, when she and Yuuji stand at the same starting line, they're equals. Here strength and stamina mean nothing. All they have to do is be patient and work slowly, which admittedly was a part of the other task but the addition of the weight and number of watermelons is what made it difficult. Instead, here, watermelons have been replaced with the light strum of a harp behind them and the seemingly ever-bickering voices of Oikawa and Bokuto — a new thing to be honest. Hana has only ever seen and heard them sing each other's praises to the sky. She can't believe she prefers that over what she's hearing now.

At least it seems to be keeping them distracted from the task at hand.

"This music is so soothing," Yuuji says, voice quiet. Not overtaking the melody surrounding them.

"Mmm," Hana agrees, "it's nice to work with music."

In what seems like no time at all, measured only against the lack of progress Oikawa and Bokuto show with regards to their own harp, she and Yuuji get all of the strings untangled.

"What next?" Yuuji asks, "do you know how to string an instrument?"

"I have no idea," Hana answers honestly. She steps away from their own instrument to look at the one she thinks Daishou and Mika were standing at earlier. She can see the finished project here, but it's not greatly instructional on how to get from where she and Yuuji are to what she's seeing now. She casts a look over to where Oikawa and Bokuto stand in a tense silence for the moment over their own harp. She's not expecting it to help, but the longer she stares at their hands working and knocking and hitting away at each other the more the pieces come together. Hana can see how they're bringing the strings up through the harp, and on Mika's finished one, Hana can see how they all get tied into place.

"Do we have like, a long stick thing?"

Yuuji looks confused for a moment before he drops to his knees and rummages carefully around the dangling strings. "Like this?"

Hana quickly looks back over to where Bokuto and Oikawa's silence has not lasted, it looks the same. "Yeah."

Yuuji smiles a wicked smile and places the long, thin hook between his teeth. "So what do we do next?"

"First, we pull the string up through these holes at the top," Hana points out a few of them, and waits for Yuuji to nod his understanding before continuing, "so we push the string up through there from the bottom, pull it up with your hook, and then tighten it onto these coils here and I think that's it."

"That's it?"

"That's all that I can see on Mika's harp, seriously, go take a look."

Yuuji does just that, while Hana feeds up the string right at the very top end of the harp. She has to bend down again to see where she's putting it properly, and already she feels her back ache with sympathy for a pain that is sure to hit tomorrow — could they not have provided seats or something?

Yuuji comes back as she's threading another string, first one already tied off and taut, "I feel like there has to be something else. It can't be this easy if Bokuto and Oikawa are still here."

"Did you see anything else though?"

"No," Yuuji says, picking up a string from the opposite end, he pulls the hook from between Hana's lips where she's resting it while she tightens her second string into place and pulls it through.

"We'll do this, then check, and if we have to keep going at least we're going in the right direction by doing this."

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Kenji & Mai**  
>  **#servedwithice**  
>  **Currently in second place**

 

The clue box they're looking for stands out bright and obvious amongst the pale courtyard. Kenji rushes towards it and pulls open the lid. He still thinks they're in good position. There are a lot of cards still in there. He knows they're ahead of two teams, but the number of clues in the box have him thinking that stringing the harp has been taking a while as well.

Good.

Nametsu pulls the envelope from his hand and tears it open to read out their next task. "Roadblock," she says, "who's ready to use their head?"

He would usually push Nametsu towards the task with a clue like this, but she's been fading. The long night and the heavy lifting have been taking their toll. Nametsu hasn't complained, hasn't said a thing really, but it doesn't stop Kenji from seeing it. The slow way she lifts her arms, slow words, long staring. She needs to rest.

"I'll do it." He states before Nametsu gets it into her head that she should be the one doing this.

She looks shocked at his words, "but... I thought."

Kenji places his hands on her shoulders, rolls them up to her face. "I can do it," he says, he's trying not to be condescending. It's not that he doesn't believe in her, it's just he wants her to rest. They're not done yet. They still have to reach the finish line along with anywhere else they might have to visit beforehand. "You, cheer me on," he squeezes at her cheeks, and it's telling of how tired she is that she doesn't react to it, "and rest up ready to run onto the next thing. Okay?"

"Okay," she says, "what do you have to do?"

"Bottle dance," he says, "it's apparently a Paraguayan tradition." Music starts up, just beyond where they're standing and the both of them walk towards the stairs leading down to see. "What? I have to do that?"

Nametsu is ushered to a bench in front of the fence bordering the upper level and Kenji is left to descend the stairs himself. To dance. He has to dance. Why does it have to be dancing?

The bottles don't sit easily on his head, no matter how easy the girls make it look. It swings and sways and Kenji speeds his steps up to catch the motion before it falls but it doesn't work. Bottle after bottle hits too hard against his head or against the air or against the ground and soon he's dancing between shards of glass on the floor.

"Slow it down!" Nametsu calls down. Kenji wishes she understood that he can't slow it down. He has to keep moving to keep the bottle in place. Can't she see that? The other girls surrounding him and making this look easy don't stop. They're always in motion and the bottles rest easily on their heads, the girls dancing almost like it's not there.

"You should have done this!"

"You volunteered for it!"

"Shut up! You're distracting me!" Nametsu's eyes flash but she does, in fact, sit down to watch from her perch quietly.

He picks up another bottle from the table, he's gone through two rows now, hopefully he's not going to ruin it for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Suguru & Mika**  
>  **#solemates**  
>  **Currently in third place**

 

"Who's ready to use their head?" Suguru reads out. He searches around, he can't see anything, nothing that gives away what they could be doing. All he sees is Nametsu sitting at a bench, further along, body pressed towards the fence lining the area, attention on something on the ground. So, Futakuchi is the one doing the roadblock. He would rather put himself against Futakuchi, but, their roadblocks are skewed.

"We're still ahead of Bokuto and Oikawa," Mika tells him, "and Terushima and Hana only just showed up."

Suguru can read between the lines. "You're feeling okay," she nods her head, determined. "Okay."

"I'll do it!" Mika shouts out, and Suguru laughs at the volume of it. Nametsu turns around to look at them and offers a smile.

Suguru is the one to open the rest of the clue up and when he reads it he laughs out as well and Nametsu waves down the way of where she was watching. He can see it the moment Mika sees that it's a dancing challenge, her usual smile grows smug and Suguru wants only to kiss it from her face. Later, another time. When they aren't in a rush and when there aren't cameras all over them. Mika rushes off in the direction of the stairs and sits himself down next to Nametsu.

"I'm so glad Mika spoke up," he says.

Nametsu laughs, "you're lucky. Futakuchi sucks at this." Suguru doesn't even know what _this_ is. He does end up looking down though, and laughs himself. Loud enough for Futakuchi to hear and direct a one finger wave in his direction which only has Suguru chuckling harder.

"He looks like a drowned rat!"

Nametsu laughs next to him, between hissed breaths that Suguru thinks are meant to be shushing him. 

"Come on Mika!" He shouts instead of quieting, "we can beat them!"

Mika nods her head from down below and Suguru does quiet when she picks up a bottle from a full table, he counts Futakuchi's spaces, he's used up ten bottles so far. they can't have been here for that long. Mika places the bottle on her head and holds out her arms, balancing her body, her neck, her head. She holds herself stiff and proud and she takes a few steps in a circle before directing her attention to where one of the girls dressed in flowing skirts and dancing easily around where Futakuchi is struggling.

She follows the steps she's told up until she's on her knees. It's only then that she bends too far forward and the bottle slips from her head.

"It's okay Mika! You've got this! Easy!"

"What the fuck?" Suguru laughs at Futakuchi's bemusement.

"Watch her Futakuchi! Take it slow!"

Futakuchi glares up at them, and Suguru wonders why it was they chose Futakuchi for this, yes, he wanted to do it himself, but luckily Mika volunteered. Did Futakuchi volunteer himself? If so, he's probably regretting it at this point.

Suguru sits quietly as Mika attempts it again. Again, when she gets to the ground the bottle crashes in front of her. Suguru sees her jump. He hopes she isn't psyching herself out. "Is there a broom around?" Suguru hears her ask, and then what he assumes is the question again as she mimes sweeping up the floor in front of her. Suguru hopes she hasn't cut herself, he hopes she isn't injured.

"You're fine Mika! You're fine! Keep it up you're doing great!"

She offers him a small smile as she places another bottle carefully against her skull and Suguru finds himself holding his breath as she holds her arms out to balance. She steps, swings, lunges into the routine, kneels to the floor and Suguru wants to shout out to her, to celebrate moving forward this one step, but he stays silent. It eventually crashes to the floor as she lays down to her stomach, but she doesn't jump this time, not for the crash at least. As the glass shatters, Mika jumps to her feet, dusts herself off, and calmly picks up another bottle. They can do this. She can do this. She has this beat. She has Futakuchi beat.

_She has Futakuchi beat._

"Yes!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Kenji & Mai**  
>  **#servedwithice**  
>  **Currently in third place**

 

"Fuck!" 

"I told you Futakuchi! You have to go slowly!" 

If looks could kill, Mai would be dead on impact but Futakuchi's icy glare does nothing to her. This is all on him. Mika and Daishou race up the stairs and to the taxi and ... grab their bags and run away from the taxi. _They're running to the next destination_.

"Come on Mika, here, pass your bag, let's go."

They're running. _Running_. Mai can run.

She bites on her nails, she's not going to yell. It's not going to help. Futakuchi is probably already frustrated. All she can do it hope nobody else shows up. She only knows of one team behind them and she doesn't want to be left running for a finish line with Kuroo and Ushijima. It wouldn't be a race it would be a massacre.

"What are you waiting for?" Futakuchi shouts up at her. He has an envelope in hand. A yellow envelope and a giant smile and all of the frustration is gone. So easy. Mai told him he had to go through it slowly but does he actually listen to her? No. He only listens when he sees Mika out do him doing exactly what Mai had told him to do from almost the start. What a pain.

"Come up here! We'll read it up here!" They have to read it quickly, and pay the driver and grab their bags and she doesn't know exactly where it is they're going but she does know what direction Mika and Daishou ran off in.

"Make your way on foot to the next pit stop, Escalinata de Antequera!" 

"You grab the bags, pass me the money to pay the driver!" Mai pushes him towards the back of the car and almost trips over the sound guy to get to the driver's window. He rattles off a number and she hands him more notes than what he asked for and shoves the clue in her hand to his face. He points over his shoulder and says words she doesn't understand but it's the same direction Mika and Daishou went and that's all she needs.

"Come on!" She shouts, picking up her back and shoving it roughly up to her shoulders. It feels like it grazes her arms with the sting it leaves behind but that doesn't matter. "We can catch up!"

"Which way!" The frustration is back, it didn't last long, Mai only hopes it will aid them in getting to the pit stop faster.

"This way!" She bolts from the car in the direction she's been shown. "If we— _hah_ — find them— _huh_ — we can follow— _uh_ — and beat them at the end." She's not going to talk anymore. It's too hard to talk and run.

She runs in a straight line, Futakuchi at her shoulder. She only knows that it is in this direction. She doesn't know if they have to turn or if it's up an alley or anything. She runs down the street, only in the hopes that this is right, that she is right, that Mika and Daishou ran the same way, that they will find each other.

Futakuchi tugs at her arm and pulls her down another street. The sign on the corner reads the same as the card and Mai huffs out a breath, louder than usual, to be considered as thanks but sounds like nothing.

"Just run." Futakuchi doesn't sound nearly as breathless. She thinks it's unfair, she'll think more about how unfair it is later. "You're faster than her, we're catching up, can you see?" Her eyes are on the ground, mostly on the ground, but up ahead, and thank goodness for the time, thank goodness for it being too early in the morning for regular people to be awake, because it makes it easy to spot four people running ahead of them. Mai nods, as best as she can. She can't speak. It hurts at the moment just to breathe. Every inhale pulls tight in her chest and each exhale burns her throat. "You're faster than her," Futakuchi says again. "We are going to catch up to them and then you just have to beat her. Nobody else, just beat her."

Futakuchi puts real effort into his strides now, and it hits Mai, that he was running to keep pace with her. Her speed is nothing next to his. She already feels like she's running her hardest but she pushes on harder still. She tries to keep up. And Daishou's face when he turns to see them coming only pushes her on even further.

They turn again. A staircase this time. Why do they have to run up stairs? But there's the finish line. The lights and the mat and two people standing amongst all of the activity in the middle of a quiet night and Mai drops her bag from her shoulders.

She's so much lighter now. She pushes herself up the stairs because Futakuchi is right, she is faster, and she pushes past Mika on the stairs, only moments before stepping on the mat. Futakuchi catches her before she can fall forward into the beautiful woman standing in front of her. Beautiful, and Mai is here sweating and gasping and they're going to be next to each other on a television screen and it's not fair but they did it!

Did they do it?

"That was a close one!" Phil says, and his voice gives nothing away. "Everyone on the mat, come on, huddle up!" Phil laughs and Futakuchi pulls her into his side and she leans on him, still catching her breath. "Kenji, Mai, congratulation you are the second team to arrive!"

She sinks even further into Futakuchi. His hands squeezes tight against her arm and Mai does her best to squeeze at whatever part of him is closest to her hand. She can't pick it up, she's put everything into this last run. At least it was worth it.

"Which means, Suguru and Mika you are the third team."

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in fifth place**

 

"Just so you know, the string has to come this way!"

Tooru drops the string in his hand, "fine, okay, here, you do it!" Bokuto takes the string up in hand and Tooru leans down to pick up another one.

"Hey Oikawa! Where are you pulling that?" He's not _pulling_ it anywhere, he's just trying to untangle it. From the mess they still have "Are you going through the—  Where are you pulling that?" Tooru isn't _pulling_ on anything. He's just trying to tie up the string. To have one more piece out of the way. "You already have that one tight man!" Tooru doesn't understand why Bokuto seems to think he's the expert on this when they both know nothing. Bokuto probably knows even less of the nothing than he does.  "This string!" He shouts, pointing only. Tooru can't guess at which string he's pointing at because while they have most of the strings properly tied up. The few left are all still in a giant tangled mess and pointing at where they all lie together means nothing to him. "This string needs to go— This string!" Tooru doesn't bother moving until Bokuto actually takes the time to pull whatever string it is he's talking about free. Pushing at the ends of it until it's long enough to string up. "This string, there it is!"

Bokuto at least takes the initiative to tie the string up in place.

It's not in place.

"Where's this one!" There's a gap in their stringing. They've been trying to tie them up, end to end. And Bokuto has just skipped over one of them. Pushed it through, tied it off, tightened it, and all through the wrong hole.  "You have to actually check for the hole first!" He shouts.

"We missed one?" Bokuto's voice is loud. It doesn't need to be. They're the only ones left here now and his voice rings loudly through the theatre.

"More than one," Tooru admits, eyes search the top of the harp and spying another empty hole.

"Did we really miss another one?"

"Yep, all the way back here." Tooru points it out. It means every single string they've tied up since is in the wrong place. They'll have to loosen them, untie them, pull them through the hole and push them back up the right hole and into place.

"Dude, let's just go." For once Bokuto isn't shouting. His voice is low, lower than the music that despite the amount of time they've spent doing this is still playing. "We have to go. Let's do the other one." That's all he says. He turns around with no further words, picking up his bag and walking down the aisle and out the door. Tooru chases after him, frustration running through his veins and clouding his mind. They were getting the hang of things. They've fucked up and it's been difficult but they were actually getting somewhere.  "We should have done the watermelons in the first place!" Tooru feels like his heart has stopped. His eyes well and his vision blurs and he blinks quickly to disperse the tears. Bokuto agreed to come, but now he's running away. "Let's... come on... we gotta go!" Bokuto shouts at him, and Tooru has to chase after him down the empty road.

"With what!" Tooru screams back. "We don't have a car! We didn't save our taxi! There's nothing around!"

Bokuto throws his bag down on the pavement. Something crashes inside and Tooru briefly considers what breakable things they're both carrying but it can't be anything too important.

"We can't quit," Tooru sniffs, talking to the bag on the floor, "we're not going to quit. There's nothing here, there's nobody around," and the sky is already turning pink in anticipation of the sun. They've taken so long. They're already last. They have to be. "We might as well go back in there and just try to finish the harp, we'll finish what we started. That's what we do!"

Bokuto picks up his bag. "Fine." He slings it over his shoulder and walks back in the direction of the auditorium. Tooru didn't realise how far away they'd gone. Walking, shouting, yelling, screaming, in the dead of the night. Anyone living in the neighbourhood hates them. "I'm going to go back and I'm going to get it done."

 _They are_ , but Tooru doesn't interject his words.

"I don't care if it takes us all day, we're going to get it done."

Without his permission, fresh tears bubble up and fall down his cheeks. He doesn't make a noise, he doesn't blubber or gulp he just lets them run their course and follows Bokuto back inside. He needs to get everything out of his system if he's going to pour all of his focus back into stringing up the harp.

"It's always better to start something and finish it, y'know?" Tooru says it to Bokuto, but he's also trying to convince himself. He made this choice for them. This fighting and yelling and struggling are all born from the decision he made.

 

  

 

 

 

 

> ** Yuuji & Hana  
>  #prematureacceleration  
>  Currently in fourth place **

 

The plaza they're dropped off at is empty. Which isn't the best of signs, but, anything is better than being in last place. All they have to do, is not be in last place and they've left Bokuto and Oikawa behind them. They're fine. 

Yuuji races up to open up the clue box, "there are still two left."

"Guess we aren't the only ones who can't stack watermelons!" It makes her feel a little bit better about leaving. She hates to think they could have still been there. "We made a good decision."

"Yeah we did!" He rips open the tab of the envelope and pulls out the card from inside. "Who's ready to use their head?"

"I am," Hana says, "I can do it."

"Okay."

"What have I signed up for?"

"Dancing!" Yuuji cheers, a smile in his voice. "This should be fun!"  Hana sighs, this is what she gets for thinking it might be a mental task. "Kick butt!" She left with Yuuji's almost maniacal laughing in her ears as she walks down the stairs to her doom.

She dances through the routine a good few times before even trying it out with the bottle on her head. Which seems a mistake. She's memorised the dance now, easy, it's not anything too difficult. What is difficult is balancing a glass bottle on her head. Five bottles smash to pieces before she even manages to take a step. Even more smash in her hand in an attempt to stop them from falling and soon enough, Yuuji's incessant laughter turns frightful.

"Come on Hana! Pay attention!" 

She forces a smile through her teeth at him. "I am trying!" He sends back a thumbs up and mimes zipping his lips. She tries again. More steps, but her head just does not seem to be the right shape to hold anything. "I think I have a weirdly shaped head! Do I have a weirdly shaped head?"

"I've never checked!"

It forces a laugh from her lips, sending another bottle crashing to the floor. "Fuck." It's her fault for asking Yuuji what was a half serious question. She doesn't think she's ever thought about the shape of Yuuji's head either, and with his constantly changing hairstyles, his head would be much easier to judge.

"Can you hold it up sideways? Is that allowed?"

Hana tries, she tilts her head to one side and places the bottle on the new peak of her head. It helps, for a few steps, although it's painful.

Yuuji claps for the attempt and Hana bows down to the applause. "Just relax and do what you can. We don't need to panic yet, but try not to use up all the bottles!"

She does calm down at the words. She fits one bottle to her head and spends a few minutes practicing just walking around with it. With gentle steps and a soft touch she catches the bottle each time it falls without wasting it. 

"Wish me luck!" She calls up to Yuuji, ready to take on another attempt and trying not to think about the five bottles she has left in which to accomplish the task before they have to take the penalty.

Yuuji holds two hands up high with fingers crossed.

Hana takes a deep breath before placing the bottle atop her hair, she holds it in place for a few seconds, readying herself for this. She just wants to be done.

It's hard. Harder than it should be because Yuuji cheers along with every step. He shouts applause and sings praises and despite the noise remains serious in supporting her by not mentioning her stiff movements as she follows the girls around her through the routine.

"Yes, yes! Hana, you're the best! I love you! I'm sorry for every bad thing I've ever said about you!"

"No, you're not." Hana laughs to herself, accepting the envelope that's held out to her before quickly handing it off to Yuuji when he appears at her shoulder so as not to get it wet. She didn't even realise how much water ended up over her until her fingerprints soaked into the envelope. It doesn't deter Yuuji from engulfing her in a hug and spinning her around in celebration until she has to tap as his shoulders to be set back on the ground. He lights a swift kiss to her forehead before directing his attention back to the clue in hand.

"Right, you ready?" Hana simply nods her head and Yuuji tears into it. "Make your way on foot — on foot, we have to run—  to the next pit stop, Escalinata de Antequera! Where's that?"

"Why would I know? We'll ask the driver. We have to get our bags out anyway."

"Oh, yeah." Yuuji laughs and steps away, dragging Hana by the hand up the stairs back to their car. There's still no sign of anyone else behind them, their car sits lonely on the street by the entrance.

They get directions that involve a lot of hand signals and Hana hopes they'll be okay.

They start out on the zigzagging directions they've been given — although Hana is sure there's the potential for fewer turns — and eventually they arrive at a giant staircase which leads them to the mat.

"Hi!" Yuuji cheers to the beautiful woman standing by Phil's side and Hana drags him out of slapping distance should the woman choose to do so.

"Hi!" She smiles a heavenly smile, "welcome to Asuncion, Paraguay."

Hana nods her head and holds down tight on where she can feel Yuuji trying to step forward again.

"Yuuji and Hana, you are the fourth team to arrive."

"Fourth," Yuuji echoes. "That's pretty good!"

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Tetsurou & Wakatoshi  
>  #VO2themax  
>  Currently in fifth place **

 

It's going better this time. This time, Tetsurou feels like he's got the hang of it — which is funny because he only managed to get two levels of the stupid pyramid done before but now he's actually close to finishing it.

He places in the last watermelon for the level, hands moving steadily and slowly, he brings them away again just as slow. "Phew," it stays still in place, the whole thing stays in place. "Okay, Ushijima we need another cart."

"I got you one already."

"Ah," he has. Tetsurou can see that surrounding the base of their pyramid are perhaps five or six watermelons on the floor, and next to them is a cart, fresh up with an entirely new pile of watermelons. They only have three more rows lefts to go. They don't need the giant pile of watermelons but it's also soothing to know Ushijima isn't watching him work too closely. Especially now they're this far in. "Thanks."

"Should I go get more?"

"No," Tetsurou says, "we're nearly done." And he feels like he's been good on time too. It's hard to tell without anybody else still being here, it's hard to tell when he hasn't looked at his watch at all for the entire time they've been on the ground here, but he doesn't feel like he's been taking up too long. And—

"Fuck!" He had to go and say they were nearly done.

"It fell on this side too."

Tetsurou has nobody to blame but himself. He wanted to do this all on his own. 

And of course, he probably has taken forever because _he wanted to do this all on his own_ and Ushijima has been letting him. Everyone else had everyone working and building the pyramid up two watermelons at a time has to be faster than building it up one at a time and he's screwed anyway because now they have to build it up again.

The entire side where he stands, one watermelon still held in the air to be placed but now with nowhere for him to place it, has collapsed. The watermelons meet in a pile on the floor, and in the middle, they remain at the height Tetsurou has just built up to, but along the edges, everything has fallen down. It's in a pyramid now, a giant mess of a pyramid, not neat like the ones completed around them and yet still not as messy as the only other one fallen down and left to be that way around them. 

"Clear out where it's fallen," Tetsurou says, "we have to see if any of it actually stayed in shape."

"If I take anything out, it's more likely that the whole thing is going to come down."

Tetsurou raises his hands to his hand, dropping the watermelon that was the cause of it all. He grips at his hair in two large clumps and crouches to rest his head between his knees. He lets out a long groan before picking just his head back up to look at Ushijima, who is surveying the damage. "If it's going to fall then it's going to fall. We can't make something that might fall down while they're judging it anyway. Just," he takes a deep breath, all of that work, gone, "just do what needs to be done." And if they're lucky, maybe they'll be able to salvage the middle section of the pyramid. If they're unlucky... Tetsurou doesn't even want to think about it.

Ushijima gets to work, Tetsurou only supervising, thinking.

He's going to have to trust Ushijima now. He's going to have to trust that Ushijima knows not to press down too hard. They definitely don't have the time now to be taking things slow. They also don't have the option of switching. They've put too much time into this. They've taken so long. Everyone has probably already moved onto the roadblock and their only hope in staying in this thing is to hope the detour is hard, is to hope they'll be able to see others there. 

They should have stayed. Oikawa was clearly smart, Tetsurou knows now it must have been Oikawa to drag Bokuto to completing the harp task. He must have known. When they accidentally followed the two of them there he and Ushijima should have stayed there.

But they've made their bed, and now they have to lie in it.

"Do I need to move over any more watermelons? If we're going to start this again I don't want to have to leave them to the mercy of not being watched after." Not having a permanent eye on them didn't hinder the other teams, but Tetsurou feels the same way.

"So long as none of them are broken we should have enough. There were only—" _Why?_ Why did it have to fall? _They were so close!_ He takes a deep breath, this is nothing to get this frustrated over. There is nothing he can do now. He is not going to let the stress get to him. He is not going to cry in front of the cameras— "There were only three more rows to go."

Ushijima looks at the last cart he wheeled over. He nods his head, "I have another twenty so we should have plenty."

Ushijima has cleared the mess away now. On Tetsurou's side, what's left is four watermelons wide. His chest hurts. All of that time, all of that effort, gone so easily. 

The worst of it is he doesn't even know what happened. It simply had fallen down in front of his eyes. Watermelon to be placed still hovering over its place.

There's no point dwelling on it.

"Come on then," Tetsurou gets to his feet once more, he lifts his shirt to wipe the sweat away from his face, to dry his hands, "remember," he says to Ushijima, "be gentle with them."

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in fifth place**

 

Tooru buries himself into Bokuto's chest as they finally call for their harp to be judged. It's been a long day, a long night, if they haven't actually finished that's it. He gives up. He just doesn't want to be here anymore. He doesn't want to shout, he doesn't want to argue. He doesn't want to be here anymore, he doesn't like the person he has been in this theatre. He's done.

"Congratulations."

He buries in even further. He's crying. He can't feel it yet but he knows he is and he needs to hide it in Bokuto's embrace and in the comforting rumbling of his laugh against his ears. 

"Come on," Bokuto sounds relieved too, Tooru squeezes once more at the clothes on Bokuto's chest and lifts his head up to meet with a dazzling smile. "We finally get to leave."

Tooru laughs, it's wet and messy but it's a relief to laugh together again. For a moment, he didn't think they'd be able to come back from it. "Finally." He wants the day to be over. He wants to sleep, whether that's on a plane home or waiting for the next day to come he doesn't care anymore. He just wants to sleep and he wants Bokuto to keep smiling at him and he wants to be able to keep laughing. "What does it say?"

"Make your way to Plaza de la Democracia."

"We're going to have to find a taxi," Tooru says, "maybe we should have looked for one earlier."

"We'll be fine," Bokuto says, fingers trailing down Tooru's cheeks. He feels lighter under Bokuto's touch and the words mean more to him than just for the day. 

"Okay," he says, "okay."

Bokuto picks up both of their bags and Tooru only reaches for his own when they're outside and back down the street. It feels like an age since they've been outside but they haven't been trapped in the theatre for as long as he felt because the sun has yet to fully sit in the sky.

They walk slowly, hands finding each other in the air, for a long while before they stumble upon a rank of taxis. Bokuto takes the task of asking one of them to take them to the plaza, and it's an almost silent ride until they arrive. "Should we keep them?"

"No," Tooru says, "we have to save money." As if there's actually a point to doing so anymore. He pays the driver and waves him off and follows Bokuto up to drop their bags beyond the clue box. 

Bokuto is the one to rip it open, reading the words silently and then staring at him. "What?"

"Who's ready to use their head?"

"Oh." A mental thing. "I can't." He's already failed once today.

"You can do it."

"I can't!" Tooru whines, "Please do it, I can't let you down again. That last task was all my fault, I just... I can't." He can't do that to Bokuto again. He forced that task on him, he forced him into staying. It's all on him. His mind is too weighed down with the burdens of it all to think straight.

"Hey, hey, shh," Bokuto coos. "I'll do it, it's fine, shh. There's no need to cry."

"I'm not."

"I know," Bokuto says, "I was saying it just in case." He opens the envelope and laughs again at whatever it is that he finds inside. "It's dancing, we're fine, I'm a good dancer!"

"Are you?"

Bokuto puffs his chest out, and the familiar sight presses a bubble of laughter from his chest. "Of course I am!"

"Okay," Tooru presses a long kiss to Bokuto's cheek as a sign of good luck and waves him away. He's ushered to a bench he never noticed before, and he drags both his and Bokuto's bag to drop next to him.

Bokuto, as it quickly becomes apparent, cannot dance at all. Tooru chews on his nails as he watches, watching Bokuto drop further and further into his own frustration and feeling guiltier and guiltier for pushing this on him as well. To be fair, Bokuto might be able to dance, if the dance didn't involve balance a glass bottle delicately on his head. He moves too much. For whatever reason, Bokuto enlists an extra bounce in every step, and every bounce only helps to keep the bottle tumbling and water streaming.

"I'm sorry!"

"I'm sorry!" Tooru echoes back, watching the drop in Bokuto's shoulders, the tightness in his face. He did this to him. Again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> ** Tetsurou & Wakatoshi  
>  #VO2themax  
>  Currently in sixth place **

 

"Last one," Wakatoshi whispers.

"Last one," Kuroo echoes.

"I can't do it." Wakatoshi doesn't want to deal with the pressure of placing the last one. He should have. It doesn't mean that much when they're already so far behind. Light is already starting to creep over the sky. They're already in last.

"Fine." Kuroo doesn't sound like he wants to do it either. "Last one," he repeats, he takes long deep breaths but Wakatoshi can still see the watermelon shaking in his hands.

It's shaking, it's shaking, it's down, it's in place, and the whole thing is down. Again.

Kuroo's entire body slumps to the floor. This is Wakatoshi's fault. He didn't want the pressure to be on himself and so he passed it over to Kuroo. This is his fault. So he doesn't say anything. He just rinses and repeats what he did not that long ago. He stoops to clear up the loose watermelons from around their pile. When more slip from what was so close to being a fully formed pyramid, he lets them. If they aren't stable, they aren't stable. Kuroo's hands were shaking, sure, but the watermelon held within them had seemed stable enough. It wasn't his fault, it was their fault, they need to get better at having the pyramid stand on its own.

Although, based on recent events, the last two tumbles, they might be better off trying to rush through it all. Building it up as fast as they can and getting it judged and themselves out of their before the interior structure of the thing inevitably breaks down again.

He places down one watermelon, gently as can be, but it doesn't stop the entire thing from shaking again.

"We have to take the whole thing down," he says, "it's not stable," and Kuroo probably knows this, but was hoping it wouldn't come to this, "we have to start again."

Kuroo groans into his hands, "fine, fine!" He doesn't look up from them. "Pull everything down and try not to break anything, we have everything we need here and we just, urgh, we just need to get it done. Properly this time." Even though it hasn't mattered that they have been trying to put it together properly the rest of the time.

Together, quickly but carefully, they clear of the space where they've been building the pyramid up. "From the beginning again then," Kuroo sighs. 

Wakatoshi lays out the first few watermelons, he makes a five by five grid in one corner of their space, then fills the other half of the space he's been given as Kuroo works line by line on the other side.

"Okay," Kuroo says, once everything is in place, "we need to make this as tight as we can. I want all of them to be facing the same way."

"Do it this way," Wakatoshi says, pushing them onto their sides, eliminating the space between them. Space isn't what they want. Space is what they are collapsing into. They need to get rid of as much of it as possible.

Kuroo twists around the watermelons in his area, and when they are all laying the same way, they work on level two.

"I guess we should trying to put them in in the right position too, huh?"

"Well, it does mean there's less manoeuvring of everything once the level is finished."

"Which means less chance of us fucking the entire thing over as well I guess."

"More than a guess I would say."

Kuroo laughs, and they finish up the next level in a steady silence.

And the next, and the next, and the next.

Wakatoshi takes the last one in his hands this time. He doesn't feel as nervous as he did earlier. He's almost confident in fact. Their building this time around has been much sturdier. So sturdy he wouldn't be surprised if they leave it up as morning properly dawns for them to use in the market place. They've made somebody's day easier at least. He places it carefully atop the four watermelons waiting to rest it. And stills. The stall owner comes by, he's been watching intently — and they haven't made anyone's day easier because he's been here all night, the same as them.

"Here," it's lacklustre being handed the clue, but Wakatoshi is happy to receive it. He's happy to be leaving.

"I never want to see another watermelon ever in my life."

Kuroo laughs next to him. "We'll ban them." His words sound sure, like he is convinced, guaranteed, that he will be able to do such a thing. At this point Wakatoshi actually wants Kuroo to be able to do such a thing. "So what does it say?"

"Make your way to Plaza de la Democracia."

"Okay, we can do that, okay." They don't run, there's no point to running. They walk out the gate to see their taxi driver snoozing in the front seat of his car. Wakatoshi feels bad for waking him up, but knocks on the window to do so anyway. The driver rouses slowly, and he and Kuroo let him. It's their fault he had to wait for so long. How long has it been now since the other drivers left? An hour at least, more likely it's two or three. "Can you take us here?" Kuroo asks, holding up their next clue. Wakatoshi is glad Kuroo asks, he's much more gentle when people need gentility. And a sleepy driver is cause for such an approach.

The driver nods his head slowly and just as slowly they crawl into the back of the car.

"How long do you think it'll be until we can sleep?" Kuroo asks, "I could go for a really long nap after that, although," he pauses, "maybe I should stay awake a little longer, I don't want to have nightmares of being buried beneath watermelons."

"Don't even think that word," Wakatoshi says, and they travel in silence.

The plaza they arrive at is bathed with lights. They're different to the production lights, they don't sear the eyes and the lack of glaringly bright lights has Wakatoshi thinking they're in the wrong place, until he recognises the person sitting up ahead of them. "Oikawa?"

He turns slowly to face them. Pale, drawn face turning even more so. "Bokuto!" He shouts out over the fence he's pressed up against. "Hurry it up! The idiots just got here!"

"Oi! That's not fair!" Kuroo shouts back. There's a whoop from down where Oikawa just shouted and Wakatoshi knows that Bokuto has just heard Kuroo's words.

"Where's the clue box?"

"Why would I tell you?"

"It's right there," Wakatoshi points out. Oikawa turns away in a huff and Kuroo races to open it.

"I'm doing it, I'm doing it, who's ready to use their head? Me of course! Wait you actually picked Bokuto?" Kuroo laughs and Oikawa huffs once more, the noise carrying through the still air of predawn.

"I'm gonna kick your ass!" Kuroo shouts, running off down the stairs with his clue in hand and Wakatoshi left without knowing what the task even is.

He takes a seat next to Oikawa and leans forward to see what is below them.

Tables, tables lined up with bottles, and girls dancing in flowing dresses, flowing dresses and decorations littering their heads. He watches Bokuto pick up a bottle, place it on his head, and step slowly into a similar dance to the girls around him.

Oh, not decorations on their heads. Bottles, glass bottles by the sound of the one crashing at Bokuto's feet. He's used up half a table of bottles already. Some tables have fewer bottles, a few have more, and Wakatoshi looks at them and thinks Kuroo is agile enough, graceful when he wants to be. He can probably do this.

One bottle goes on Kuroo's head, and immediately falls off. "Dig it into your hair!" Wakatoshi shouts down to him. "What's the point of it all if you can't hold shit in it!" Wakatoshi sits back down, stunned. He hadn't meant to say that, it had just happened. He's not the kind of person to shout such a thing.

"Got it!" Wakatoshi sees through the fence that this time, Kuroo is twisting the bottle down onto his hair.

Next to him, Oikawa groans, "fuck," it's spoken under his breath, not meant for Wakatoshi to hear, but hear it he does, "he asked to do his hair again but I told him not to, _fuck_."

It only takes a few attempts, which Wakatoshi takes as something impressive based on Oikawa's increasingly snide comments and slumping form. If it weren't for the fact that Bokuto seems to break his bottles every time they fall — with no apparent attempt to catch them and prevent them from smashing and becoming unusable — letting Wakatoshi see they haven't been there for that long, he might actually feel more sorry for Oikawa. As it is, he waves a goodbye that Oikawa turns his nose up even as Kuroo shares a shouted goodbye with an almost sobbing Bokuto.

  

 

 

 

 

> **Koutarou & Tooru**  
>  **#setsonthebeach**  
>  **Currently in sixth place**

 

Koutarou doesn't run as fast as he knows he can. He doesn't see a point. Yes, they finished up only a few minutes behind Kuroo and Ushijima, but travelling on foot? There's no way they can catch up. Koutarou knows that Oikawa isn't running at his best either. Neither of them speak, they don't cheer each other on to go faster, there's only silence.

The sound of their shoes beating down on the floor, the sound of a city waking up around them.

The street lights turn off around them and Koutarou wonders if Kuroo and Ushijima are already there, if they're celebrating, if they're happy. He wonders if just a little part of them is upset that he and Oikawa aren't in it anymore. Koutarou would be upset to race without the both of them, he likes the competition. It wouldn't have been the same if they weren't there.

It's a silver lining at least. Koutarou smiles at a young girl holding the hand of her mother, he slows down when she waves to the camera and lifts her up to share her smile with the world. Another silver lining.

He's last, but it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to him. And in the world, there are even worse things.

He places the girl back on the ground and clenches his fist around the empty space that's left there. Slender fingers ghost over them, before forcing his hand open. Koutarou picks his head up to see Oikawa smiling wetly at him.

Finish. They need to finish this. They need to finish this the same way they started this.

Koutarou squeezes at Oikawa's hand and still no words are spoken, but they seem to have been conveyed.

Koutarou takes one last look around him. At the trees lining the road, and the people that are slowly filling the streets and the shop windows that are having lights turned on behind them and the sun that is creeping higher into the above them. He can't see it yet, he's going to make it to the mat before the sun makes it to them. They both are.

They're going to run until they can't anymore, maybe they'll get lucky. Kuroo and Ushijima have been following them nearly all day. They went the wrong way once, maybe he and Oikawa are lucky enough to have it happen again.

It's the last bit of hope he has left. They went the wrong way. Of course they went the wrong way. They've taken a wrong turn somewhere. They're not there.

Oikawa squeezes at Koutarou's palm and hand in hand they start moving again. They only have two blocks to travel. One block. A flight of stairs—

Kuroo and Ushijima walking down the flight of stairs.

Okay.

He and Oikawa pause.

Koutarou wants to drop his head, but he doesn't let it fall. He pulls Oikawa up with him as he starts walking. Pulls at his limp arm, at his limp frame. Koutarou wraps his arm around Oikawa and half carries him up the stairs. He tries not to listen to Oikawa's voice, to his breath, to the way it catches in his throat. "We never once beat them." He says under his breath. Koutarou wants to soothe him, to kiss him and just hold him and make him feel better. 

Not now, later, they have to finish first.

It's a solemn step onto the mat. Oikawa doesn't pick his head up, he only clasps onto their hands with his other hand two and Koutarou is left to smile up at Phil.

Phil smiles at them, but it doesn't help Koutarou to feel any better. It only makes him feel worse. A pity smile. He doesn't want it. He wants this day to be over. It's been so longer, longer than it was meant to be. They messed up. They made a bad decision, possibly. They're last, they know they are. The sight of Kuroo and Ushijima didn't help. They took too long.

"Rough day?" Phil asks.

Koutarou forces a laugh through the lump in his throat and stares into one of the lights around them. It burns, but it saves him from having to look at that smile, now Phil's face is simply a ring of white. He can't block out his ears from Oikawa's hiccuping breaths, he can't still the way his hand shakes between both of Oikawa's. "It definitely hasn't been our best day." It's all he can say, and it's the truth.

Phil sighs, and Koutarou is sure that his pitying smile is there too. "I am sorry to tell you that you are the last team to arrive." Oikawa sobs audibly, Koutarou feels the way he leans into him. Koutarou wants to fall down too, but if he does now, they'll both go down together. Right now he needs to hold it together for the both of them. He pulls his hand from Oikawa's grip and presses Oikawa in tighter. He buries his face into Tooru's hair and comforts himself in the familiar scent, in this unfamiliar place. They really did the best they could. This just wasn't for them to win.

He feels it on the shoulder of his shirt where Oikawa is pressed. Cool, wet. Tears. He hasn't let himself go so far yet, but it's only a matter of time. Especially now that he knows Oikawa is crying. It's no big secret that he will soon follow. At this point, the world knows that they are emotional together. Koutarou presses harder against Oikawa's side, pushes his face further into Oikawa's mass of hair.

"However."

Koutarou picks his face up, Oikawa does not, but Koutarou feels the way his hands clench in tighter on his shirt.

"However." Koutarou thinks of Ushijima and Kuroo walking away, they messed up, they missed something, Koutarou doesn't want to be happy but he is, he really is. He loves them, they're fun, kind of, but if it comes down to him or them Koutarou is going to put his money on himself first. "This leg of the race is not over yet," Oikawa picks his head up from Koutarou's shoulder and his fists in Koutarou's shirt catch on skin. Koutarou feels it, but barely. "You are still in the race and here is your next clue, rip it and read it!"

Oikawa moves faster than Koutarou can register. All he knows is that the envelope is in Oikawa's hands, on the floor; there are words spoken and Oikawa is dragging him down the steps.

Koutarou's mind is still stuck on the fact that they're still in this thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KEEP ON RACING


End file.
